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
Feeling cheerful after tea, Ila Das doesn’t go straight home but heads to the bazaar instead, hoping she can afford to buy some corn meal or potatoes for her dinner. As she bobs down the path, tourists and schoolgirls laugh at her, and a boy rudely shoves her out of his way. She doesn’t notice because she’s daydreaming about getting a job at the Pasteur Institute. By the time she has reached the bazaar, however, the rude treatment is starting to wear on her. She blinks back tears and tries to hold her head high, drawing on the dignity her upbringing instilled in her.
Ila Das’s visit to Carignano buoys her spirit. But the idyll isn’t enough to offset her dire circumstances. The casual cruelty of people emphasizes her sorry state and makes Nanda Kaul’s cruelty in sending her away ever more noticeable. Her privileged upbringing gave her a sense of dignity and pride, but that alone isn’t enough to protect her from the harshness of the world. And the ill-treatment she suffers cultivates readers’ empathy for her plight.
Themes
Only the grainseller treats Ila Das with respect. He’s always kind to her and always throws in some garlic or chilies for free when she shops at his stall. Tonight, she asks the price of cornmeal, and although it’s higher than she can afford, she clings to her dignity and pretends to nonchalantly change her mind. Telling the shopkeeper that she’ll be back another day, she turns to go home. He expresses concern over the idea of her walking home alone in the dark, but she insists that she is always alone and never afraid. As she disappears into the bazaar’s crowds, the grainseller thinks of the conversation he had earlier in the day with Preet Singh, and that man’s anger.
Even though the book cultivates pity for Ila Das, the way she clings to her high-class airs seems pathetic given her dire circumstances. The only thing she has left is her pride, but indulging it renders her even more vulnerable than ever. Like Nanda Kaul, she insists on maintaining an image of herself and her life that doesn’t fit her reality. And the grainseller’s warning foreshadows the dangers inherent in this lack of self-awareness or respect for reality.
Themes
Despite her proud words, Ila Das fights rising panic as she hobbles toward her home in the growing dark. She shakes her head in consternation, causing her hairdo to collapse and making her look even more disheveled. She tries to cheer herself up by reminding herself of how she was raised. She feels a flash of pride that she, her father’s daughter has not ever and will not ever be in debt to a “hairy, half-dressed shopkeeper” like the grainseller, and in the next instant criticizes herself for the classist way she still tends to think even though she’s no longer wealthy or privileged. She comes to a fork in the road and hurries on toward her village.
Ila Das spends her days trying to drag ill-educated villagers into the era of modern medicine and marriage practices, and it’s a source of enduring frustration to her that it isn’t easier to change their ways. But her instinctive repulsion toward the kind grainseller shows how hard it can be to shed those old narratives. Clinging to her old ways doesn’t serve her any more than the villager’s insistence on folk medicine protects their health, but these deeply ingrained attitudes are nearly impossible to change.
Themes
