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Part 1, Chapter 4
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
Nanda Kaul walks to the back of the house. The ground falls away into a deep ravine. This gorge, cluttered and choked with rocks and debris, reminds her of the overwhelming responsibilities of her earlier life. She was married to the Vice-Chancellor of a small university, and she spent her days amid a swirl of activity: tending to the needs of their many children, entertaining her husband’s guests and their wives, overseeing the work of the servants. She fears that Raka’s arrival will replace the responsibility she was so anxious to escape. It seems unfair that after so many years of sacrifice, she isn’t even allowed to enjoy her hard-earned solitude. She wishes to be free, like the eagles soaring high above the hills. But she fears that she is stuck in a domestic role, like the cuckoo she can hear in the garden.
Nanda Kaul’s home sits at a remove from the fray of her messy family life, but it’s not as big a remove as she wants it to be. The messy and dangerous ravine sits just on the other side of a fence, just as Carignano is only a letter or a taxi-ride away from Asha or Raka. Looking at the ravine, she reflects on what she ran from in her old life. The image of her married life confirms the repeated suggestions in earlier chapters that Nanda Kaul resents domesticity. But it’s also clear that she wasn’t able to make as clean a break as she would like to believe; she fears that she’ll be trapped yet again in a domestic role, yet she accepts Asha’s plan without dissent.
Themes
