Writing about Fire on the Mountain in the exam

The task: CIE Paper 1

Fire on the Mountain is your prose set text on Paper 1, Poetry and Prose. The paper lasts 1 hour 30 minutes, carries 50 marks, and is closed book: you may not take the novel in with you. Across the whole paper you answer two questions, one on a poetry text and one on a prose text, so you will write one answer on this novel and should plan to spend a little under forty-five minutes on it.

For the novel you are given a choice of two questions and answer only one:

• a passage-based question, where a short extract from Fire on the Mountain is printed on the paper and you are asked how Desai makes it striking, moving or revealing;
• a general essay question, which ranges across the whole novel and gives you no printed extract to lean on.

Because the exam is closed book, the essay route asks you to carry precise references in your head. Choose whichever question plays to the reading you can support best, and commit to it early.

What the examiners are looking for

Four assessment objectives share the marks equally, a quarter each. In paraphrase, and to be checked against the current published syllabus rather than quoted from it:

• AO1, knowledge. You know the novel closely and support your points with apt reference to the text.
• AO2, meaning and context. You understand what the novel means and reach beyond the surface to its ideas and attitudes. At CIE, context lives inside this objective: the world of the novel counts when it deepens the meaning, not as a bolted-on paragraph.
• AO3, writer’s craft. You recognise how Desai uses language, structure and form to shape meaning and effect.
• AO4, personal response. You communicate a considered, informed response of your own.

The weightings and wording above are paraphrased for teaching. Marks, grids and level ladders vary between series, so always check them against the current published Cambridge syllabus (0475 / 0992) before you rely on them.

Passage or essay: choosing and approaching

The two routes reward different strengths. The passage-based question hands you the words to analyse, so the danger is drifting into paraphrase of what the extract says. Work from the printed lines outward: read the passage twice, mark the shifts in tone or focus, then build your answer around three or four moments where Desai’s writing is doing something you can pin down. Anchor most of your answer in the extract, then reach out briefly to show how the moment sits in the whole novel.

The essay question gives you range but no scaffold. Its risk is the shopping list, a gallop through everything you remember. Turn the question into an argument first, then select four or five moments from across the three parts that let you prove it. A strong essay answer feels chosen, not emptied out.

Naming a device is labelling, not analysis

This is the sentence we come back to most. Writing ‘Desai uses fire imagery’ or ‘this is an example of irony’ names a method and stops. The marks live in the next move: what the choice does, and which word achieves it. Watch the difference on one detail from Part II:

• Labelling. ‘Desai uses fire imagery when the dust-storm looks like a bonfire.’
• Analysis. ‘When the dust-storm becomes “a splendid bonfire that burned in the heart of the yellow clouds”, the word “splendid” makes destruction sound beautiful, so Desai lets us feel the pull towards fire that Raka will later act on.’

The second version still names the method, but it does not stop there. It fixes on a single word, says what that word makes us feel, and links the effect to where the novel is heading. That is the movement from method to effect, and it is what every mark scheme is reaching for.

Building an analytical paragraph

A paragraph is one idea taken seriously. Rather than a rigid formula, think of it as four moves in order:

1. Make a point that answers the question. One arguable sentence, not a summary. ‘Raka likes the ravine’ only reports; ‘Desai makes Raka’s pull towards ruin feel like her deepest instinct’ makes a case you can defend.
2. Support it with a short embedded quotation. A phrase, tucked inside your own sentence, chosen because its exact words repay attention.
3. Analyse Desai’s method and its effect. Name what she is doing, then push into what it makes the reader see, feel or suspect, and which word carries it. This is where a naming answer becomes an analysing one.
4. Link back to the whole novel and the question. Zoom out: why this point matters to Desai’s larger design, and how it earns its place in your argument.

Practice questions

Original questions, modelled on the Cambridge style. Most are general essay questions; the last three are passage-based prompts, which in the real paper would print an extract for you to work from. In the exam you would answer only one question on the novel.

1. How does Desai present Nanda Kaul’s longing for solitude, and how far does the novel let her keep it?
2. Explore the ways Desai presents the relationship between Nanda Kaul and Raka.
3. To what extent is Raka the true recluse of the novel, and Nanda Kaul only a ‘flawed experiment’?
4. How does Desai use the landscape around Carignano to shape the mood of the novel?
5. Explore the ways Desai presents fire as a force in Fire on the Mountain.
6. How does Desai present Ila Das, and how does she make you respond to her?
7. How far does Desai present the treatment of women as the central concern of the novel?
8. Explore the ways Desai presents the past, and its hold over Nanda Kaul.
9. How does Desai make the tea party in Part III such a revealing episode?
10. To what extent does Desai invite you to blame Nanda Kaul for what happens to Ila Das?
11. How does Desai present childhood through the figure of Raka?
12. Explore the ways Desai presents the world of post-independence India in the novel.
13. How does Desai make the ending of the novel so shocking?
14. Passage-based: re-read the opening of Part I, where Nanda Kaul watches the postman climb the hill. How does Desai make this such a striking introduction to her?
15. Passage-based: re-read the part of Part II in which Raka is drawn to the burnt house on the ridge (Ch. 18). How does Desai make this moment so revealing of Raka?
16. Passage-based: re-read the closing pages of Part III, from the telephone call to Raka’s words at the window. How does Desai make this such a powerful ending?