Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Fire on the Mountain, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Nature of Freedom
Honesty and Self-Reflection
Trauma and Suffering
Class and Privilege
Female Oppression
Summary
Analysis
After tea one afternoon, Nanda Kaul places her cup down assertively and announces her plan to accompany Raka on her afternoon walk. This upsets Raka, who cherishes the isolation. But she cannot say no. As they walk awkwardly along the path to Monkey Point, unaccustomed to each other’s company, Nanda Kaul points out various sites of interest, from the burned cottage (whose story Ram Lal already told Raka) to the army installations on the hilltops, complaining about the number of tourists and soldiers overrunning the town.
Nanda Kaul shows herself to be a tourist in the wilderness that Raka effortlessly claims as her own territory. Clearly, Nanda Kaul and Raka see the world through very different eyes. Nanda Kaul cannot help but focus on other people—even if she resents their encroachment—while Raka seems to notice everything except people. Raka has what Nanda Kaul says she wants, but it’s growing clear that Nanda Kaul cannot separate herself from the world as completely as Raka.
Themes
The sound of monkeys squabbling in the treetops interrupts Nanda Kaul’s tour-guide patter, and for a moment she and Raka are united in their laughing appreciation of the silly animals’ antics. They admire a mother monkey calmly cradling her wrinkled baby. The monkeys leap onto the roof of a dilapidated house, and children and servants flood out to chase them away. Nanda Kaul and Raka resume their walk, and—much to Raka’s dismay—Nanda Kaul resumes her tour. Unexpectedly, she suggests that Raka could stay and attend school nearby in Sanawar. Raka shakes her head in refusal, then runs on ahead, horrified by the very thought of “discipline, order and obedience.” Nanda Kaul is hurt by Raka’s rejection.
The animals in this book represent absolute freedom—and freedom sometimes entails chaos. This moment could bring Raka and Nanda Kaul together—if Nanda Kaul understood or truly empathized with Raka. She can’t. She falls back into the caregiving role she claims to hate but cannot free herself from, and this in turn alienates Raka. Nanda Kaul’s instinctive conventionality rears its head in her suggestion that Raka attend a nearby school. Readers should note how quickly Nanda Kaul has moved from not caring what the child does with her days to insinuating herself into Raka’s explorations. What she says she wants and what she does are not the same.
Themes
