Struggle for Self-assertion in Desai's Fire on the Mountain

Abstract

Fire on the Mountainby Anita Desai is a novel which depicts the struggle of the protagonistfor asserting her individual self by breaking away from the long life of duties and obligation. The main protagonist of the novel, Nanda Kaul, takes recourse to self-destructive isolation as an escape from agitating and calcifying milieu in order to assert her individuality. The core of the novel forms the struggle between the need to alienate and to be involved in the painful process of life. Ultimately, the protagonist chooses the former one because it was necessitated out of humiliation and rejection and frustration and disappointment to assume her wholeness and autonomy. The protagonist of the novel is seen constantly engaged in a kind of struggle to define herself and her value as a human being. Even in her alienation, she fails to get eternal peace and freedom, let alone while living with the throng. The events like arrival of Raka, her great granddaughter and the visit of Ila Das, her old friend to her lonely villa at Carignano, prove to be the sole obstruction in her journey towards independence. While wrestling with these obstacles, the news of Ila Das's rape and murder, and Raka's setting the mountain on fire, give her a terrible blow. Finally, with her death, all the passions are purged and her crisis for self is resolved.