Fire on the Mountain: Writer's Methods and Techniques (Cambridge (CIE) IGCSE English Literature): Revision Note

Fire on the Mountain: Writer’s Methods and Techniques

Anita Desai uses a wide range of literary techniques to convey meaning and explore key themes in Fire on the Mountain. In the exam, when you are asked to analyse the writer’s methods, you should focus on how Desai’s choices shape character, relationships, and the reader’s response.

The following guide contains sections on:

• Symbolism

• Narrative perspective

• Structure

Symbolism

Anita Desai uses symbolism often and throughout the narrative of Fire on the Mountain.

Nature

• Nature is a key theme in the symbolism used in the novel

• The animals and surrounding nature around Carignano reflect many of Nanda’s concerns and feelings:

  • The animals that roam free in the grounds and countryside areas of her home could represent freedom

  • In contrast, the animals she talks about in her childhood, although a lie, were caged, perhaps showing how she felt trapped in the past

  • Raka seems to find the stories of caged animals upsetting: “In a cage, always?”

  • This could be symbolic of her feeling caged in by Nanda’s conversations

• Animals are symbolic elsewhere in the novel:

  • Raka is drawn to the langurs, but when she and Nanda see one sick-looking infant with its mother, the pair could represent Raka and Nanda

• The animals in the wild could be used to represent the chaos outside of a person’s control:

  • The langurs come from the trees and cause destruction

  • The jackals in the ravine are outside of the control of anyone

  • Rabies cannot be eradicated as the jackals remain uncontrolled 

Fire and burning

• The burned cottage up the hill can be seen as symbolic of Raka:

  • Like it has been ravaged by fire, Raka has been weakened by illness, and left anxious and drawn to danger by her father’s abuse of her mother

  • Raka likes to be left alone, even in her frail state, much like the cottage is

• The cottage could also symbolise what happens if you allow yourself to stay empty and isolated:

  • Raka wants to be left alone, but as Nanda’s experience suggests, solitude does not solve your problems, and instead leaves you stuck in a state of tragedy

The ravine

• The ravine, where Raka keeps finding herself when exploring, is a sign of danger:

  • This is perhaps why Raka is drawn to it, as she has become reckless and her unhappiness has made her care less about her safety

  • The ravine is rumoured to have ghosts and ghouls, and is a place for dangerous animals

• The fact that Nanda is up on the hill, and this dangerous place is at the bottom, may symbolise how people like her in privileged positions see those struggling in poverty:

  • They steer clear of the ravine because it represents violence, danger and disease, and the privileged may see the impoverished in the same way

Narrative perspective

Desai chose to write Fire on the Mountain from the third-person perspective. The third-person narrative point of view is one in which the narrator is outside the story. Ordinarily, this perspective allows complete knowledge of all the characters, their thoughts, and the events that unfold. However, Desai chooses to be selective with who her narration focuses on.

• The use of the third-person perspective mostly focuses with Nanda, as the protagonist, and the narrator does not comment on what characters do out of the picture when others are the focus:

  • We do not hear what Raka is off doing unless we are with her, so we have the same lack of knowledge as Nanda does on these occasions

  • The choice of this perspective filters descriptions, memories, opinions and judgements through Nanda’s perspective

• The narration does drift across to other characters, from those as important as Raka and Ila Das, to even the postman and the grain-seller

• The narration does remain selective and restrained, helping to stick within the psychological realist genre:

  • With this, we learn what each character at the time wants to show or is projecting

  • This is why we only learn about the trauma of each character slowly, often only when they are faced with it

  • At the end of the narrative, we learn that Nanda has been lying about details and her feelings because she is confronted with the reality of her situation

• Keeping the novel from having a fully panoramic omniscient narrator, Desai allows herself to withhold certain details:

  • These are the characters’ secrets, their traumas

Structure

Desai purposefully structures her novel in such a way to highlight contrasts, emphasise key plot points, or hint at what is to come later in the narrative.

Foreshadowing

There are moments in the novel that could be seen as foreshadowing.

• The fate of Ila is foreshadowed

• In the first part of the narrative, it is mentioned that English women were not safe in India after the end of the British Raj

• Nanda noticing that Ila needs help, despite not offering it, shows even someone closed off like Nanda is has become aware of the danger around Ila’s situation

• The grain seller is also worried for her walking alone in the dark and tries to warn her:

  • Both of these could be seen as foreshadowing, with Ila still seen as a woman of higher status, much like English women would have been, and the shopkeeper’s worry about danger ending up being justified

• Raka starting the forest fire at the end is another incident that is foreshadowed:

  • Her fascination throughout with fire, with the burnt cottage, the idea of fire spreading over a forest, and even the effect of the storm blowing across the hills is evident

  • She is drawn to danger, wanting to see the langurs, play down in the ravine, and has an avid interest in the ghouls Ram Lal talks of

  • For her to start a forest fire is not particularly surprising because of all this

• Nanda hurts her leg and gasps in pain just before the arrival of Raka:

  • This could be seen as foreshadowing the pain and discomfort of Raka’s arrival 

Parallelism

Parallelism is a technique where the author places characters, situations or experiences alongside one another to highlight situations, contrasts, or recurring patterns.  

• Desai uses parallelism to show how the three women in the novel are damaged by patriarchy and cycles of abuse

• Raka, Ila and Nanda have all been changed by patriarchy:

  • Raka is an anxious and scared child in a home where her father beats her mother

  • Ila was left with nothing after her parents died and left money only to their sons

  • Nanda is a shell of who she once was after years in an unhappy marriage changed her

  • The female characters’ inability to live freely is shaped by duty, age, and patriarchal expectation, creating a parallel pattern of constrained female lives

• We also see how women are seen as commodities:

  • Nanda, Tara, and even the daughter of Preet Singh, the man who brutally murders Ila Das, are objectified or utilised as tools

  • They are there to be married to men, and to serve them

Sources

Desai, A. (1999) Fire on the Mountain (Vintage)