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Part 3, Chapter 9
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 gate, Ila Das thanks Nanda Kaul for the tea and the afternoon’s reprieve from her exhausting life circumstances. It was like returning to the past. Nanda Kaul clearly likes this idea less than Ila Das does, so Ila Das changes the subject to Raka and Tara. Their plights remind her that she isn’t the only suffering person in the world. Bidding Nanda Kaul goodbye, she descends the hill, preparing to reshoulder her responsibilities.
Ila Das prepares to descend—literally and figuratively—from the safe and protected space of Carignano, back to the world of pain and suffering in the valley below. Her situation makes Nanda Kaul look especially selfish: she doesn’t have the privilege to opt out of participating in the world, and her responsibilities—preventing child marriage, trying to modernize attitudes toward healthcare—are far weightier than Nanda Kaul’s hostess duties as the Vice-Chancellor’s wife.
Themes
Nanda Kaul watches Ila Das—and the “horrors” she brought with her—slowly disappear. She doesn’t know how Ila Das hangs on despite the precarity of her existence. She knows that she should help her friend. She looks out protectively for any more taunting schoolboys, staying where she is because she sees no lurking dangers. When she can no longer see Ila Das, relief washes over her. She feels that she has faced three tests of her composure and her autonomy—Ila Das’s thoughtless invocation of Miss David, the feeling that she should invite Ila Das to stay at Carignano, and her urge just now to follow and protect her friend—and has passed all three.
Nanda Kaul feels torn between two competing impulses: the first to turn away from the horror show that is her friend’s life, the second to protect the hapless Ila Das from further harm. She experiences the interactions of the afternoon as “tests” because she still associates freedom with isolation and feels determined to do anything necessary to maintain her autonomy. The effort she must put into this suggests that it might actually be contrary to her nature.
Themes
Nanda Kaul returns to the garden where she paces restlessly. She wishes for Raka to appear but knows the girl won’t. She admires a day lily in bloom. A praying mantis climbs onto the flower under her watchful eyes. She dislodges the insect with a flick of her fingers, sending it into the leaves where it will be safe from the birds.
Having passed the test of Ila Das, Nanda Kaul immediately wishes for Raka’s company, suggesting that she truly doesn’t want to be isolated—she just doesn’t want to feel like she’s being pulled back into the world of responsibilities and expectations that she lived in when she was married. Flicking the bug into the ground—even allegedly to protect it—suggests that she's capable of great cruelty in the name of what she thinks is right.
Themes
