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
At the foot of Monkey Point, Nanda Kaul sits on one of the benches the city has installed for tourists, telling Raka to go on without her. She doesn’t have the energy to make the final ascent. Relieved, Raka scrabbles up the hill to the summit where she stands buffeted by the wind. Nanda Kaul is both alarmed and impressed by Raka’s headlong climb.
This moment illustrates the huge gulf between Raka and Nanda Kaul. Although they share an affinity for solitude and the harsh, mountainous terrain of Kasauli, this scene makes it clear that Nanda Kaul will never be more than a tourist in the wilderness, unlike the wild and free Raka.
Themes
Atop Monkey Point, Raka breathes freely for the first time since the walk began. She relishes secrecy and isolation, and she hates that Nanda Kaul imposed herself on the trip and now sits watching her from the benches below. But her resentment seems to blow away in the wind, and the sight of eagles circling on the warm currents of air over the plains far below rallies her. With delight, she imagines herself as a shipwrecked sailor alone on a deserted island. She only remembers her great-grandmother and descends after darkness falls.
Solitude suits Raka in a way that Nanda Kaul cannot understand. Raka is so radically independent that she seems to forget Nanda Kaul the moment she climbs up the mountain. And, unlike her great-grandmother, her resentments blow away easily in the wind. She is, in this moment and elsewhere in the book, as free as the eagles she admires in the valley below.
Themes
