Ghosts in She Who Became the Sun: Symbol Analysis and Study Guide

What Ghosts Are in the Novel's Worldview

Ghosts in She Who Became the Sun are the unquiet dead—hungry spirits who drift through the world unseen by most living people. The novel describes them as yin creatures: they belong to night, darkness, and damp places, and they are drawn to food offerings left for them. When Zhu first sees them clearly, they appear as white-clad figures with chalk-white faces, unbound hair, and tattered clothes, murmuring in a lonely, unintelligible language. They do not interact with the living unless food is offered, and they drift aimlessly rather than following people.

Zhu is one of the few characters who can see them. She first realizes this in the monastery when she watches a procession of ghosts glide past the illuminated window-paper of the dormitory corridor while Xu Da, lying beside her, sees nothing. The realization terrifies her. She connects her ability directly to her body—the body that received the fortune teller's verdict of a nothing fate. As she reflects, the fortune teller had read Zhu Chongba's fate in his pulse; his fate was in his body. And for everything she left behind in Zhongli, she is still in her own body, the one that received nothing and which now sees ghostly reminders of it all around her.

Where Ghosts Recur

Ghosts appear at several key moments across the novel, and each appearance shifts their significance:

The monastery: Zhu sees ghosts clustered around food offerings in dark recesses, and later watches a nighttime procession in the corridor. These early sightings establish her ability and her fear of what it means.
Around the eunuch general: When the Prince of Henan's party visits the monastery, ghosts flow through the stationary ranks of Mongol soldiers and gather around the young eunuch in full daylight. Zhu has never seen ghosts in daylight before—they are yin creatures that belong to night—and she has never seen so many together. The eunuch shows no sign of knowing they are there.
The wedding in Anfeng: Zhu deliberately summons ghosts to feed on wedding offerings, using them as a weapon to sicken her own men with plague and avoid suspicion during Chen Youliang's coup. This is the first time she actively uses her ability rather than merely observing it.
The Prince of Radiance's ceremony: After the fall of Bianliang, the Prince of Radiance tells Ma that ghosts came to watch the ceremony, and that those with the Mandate of Heaven are more attuned to the spirit world.

How the Symbol's Meaning Changes

Ghosts begin as a source of terror and evidence of Zhu's fundamental displacement. Her first reaction is dread: she thinks she can see ghosts, and the realization makes her body clench with fear. The ghosts are reminders that she is not who she claims to be—that her body carries a nothing fate and that Heaven might see through her disguise. She asks herself how she could have had the temerity to think she could fool Heaven.

Over time, ghosts become a tool. Zhu realizes that her ability to see the spirit world is knowledge she can use. When she summons the ghosts to feed on wedding offerings, she feels a thrill of power: she can see the hidden reality, the part of the world that makes sense of all the other parts, and it is something only she can do. She is using the spirit world, as others use the physical world, to serve her desire.

But the ghosts turn on her. When they notice her presence, they stop feeding, fix their terrible black eyes on her, and demand: Who are you? The question is devastating because it strips away her armor. Her belief that she is Zhu Chongba has always been her protection, but the ghosts' accusation peels her open, exposing the person she can never be. She flees, and the question haunts her dreams.

Finally, the Prince of Radiance reframes ghost-sight as a marker of cosmic attunement. His explanation that those with the Mandate of Heaven are more attuned to the threads connecting all things suggests that Zhu's ability is not an oddity or a curse but a sign of her connection to the pattern of the universe—and, by extension, to political legitimacy.

Character Connections

Zhu: Her ability to see ghosts is both a burden and a weapon. It is tied to her identity crisis—she is a girl pretending to be her dead brother, and the ghosts see through her performance. The ghosts' question Who are you? is the novel's most direct challenge to her constructed identity. Yet she also weaponizes the spirit world, and the Prince of Radiance's later explanation suggests her ability may be a sign of the Mandate.

The eunuch general: Ghosts gather around him in daylight, which Zhu has never witnessed. She wonders what it must be like to live an entire life in their company, never feeling the world unmediated by their chill. This creates a striking parallel: both Zhu and the eunuch exist between categories—she between male and female, he between the living and the dead in a social sense. Both are figures whom the spirit world marks as different.

The Prince of Radiance: He also sees ghosts, and his explanation to Ma reframes the ability as a consequence of the Mandate. This suggests Zhu's perception is not unique but is shared by those who hold cosmic power—and it raises the question of whether Zhu's ability is a sign that she is destined to rule, or a sign that she is usurping a power that does not belong to her.

Ma: She is an innocent victim of Zhu's ghost weapon, falling ill with the plague and screaming about ghosts in her fever. Her suffering shows the human cost of Zhu's ambition and the way Zhu's willingness to use the spirit world harms those closest to her.

Theme Connections

Identity as performance: Ghosts are witnesses who see through Zhu's performance. Their question Who are you? is the ultimate challenge to her constructed identity, and it exposes the gap between the person she claims to be and the person she is.

Fate vs. self-determination: Zhu's ability to see ghosts is tied to her nothing fate—the body that received nothing. But she turns this liability into a tool, suggesting she can override fate. Yet the ghosts' accusation suggests fate may still catch up with her, and the ominous momentum she feels building with every divergence from Zhu Chongba's path implies that her deviations carry cosmic consequences.

Desire as a consuming force: The ghosts feed on offerings, consuming what is given to them. Zhu's desire consumes her men's lives when she uses the ghosts as a weapon. The novel's epigraph, drawn from the Fire Sermon, frames all things as burning with the flames of passion, hatred, and infatuation—and the ghosts, as creatures of hunger, embody that consuming desire.

Power and legitimacy: The Prince of Radiance's explanation that the Mandate grants ghost-sight reframes Zhu's ability as a sign of legitimacy—or at least as a sign that she operates within the same cosmic framework as the Mandate. This connects to the novel's broader questions about what makes a ruler legitimate.

Study Questions

1. Why does Zhu's ability to see ghosts terrify her at first, and how does her relationship to this ability change?

Initially, the ability terrifies Zhu because it confirms that her body is fundamentally different—the body that received a nothing fate. She connects her ghost-sight to her fear that Heaven will see through her disguise. Over time, she learns to use the ability as a tool, summoning ghosts to sicken her men during the wedding in Anfeng. But the ghosts' question Who are you? reopens the wound, reminding her that her ability is also a vulnerability: the spirits can see what other people cannot.

2. What does the ghosts' question Who are you? reveal about Zhu's identity, and why is it so devastating?

The question reveals that Zhu's identity as Zhu Chongba is a performance that the spirit world can see through. Her belief that she is Zhu Chongba has been her armor, but the ghosts' accusation strips it away, exposing the person she can never be. The question is devastating because it suggests that her identity is not something she can simply choose—it is something the universe can see through, and her divergence from the path of the real Zhu Chongba carries accumulating risks.

3. How does the eunuch general's relationship to ghosts differ from Zhu's, and what does this parallel suggest?

The eunuch general is surrounded by ghosts in daylight, but he shows no sign of knowing they are there. Zhu, by contrast, sees them clearly and can interact with them. The parallel suggests that both characters are marked by the spirit world—both exist between categories, and both are figures of profound difference. But the eunuch's ghosts are a constant, unacknowledged presence, while Zhu's ghosts are something she can observe and eventually use. This difference may reflect their different relationships to identity: the eunuch has accepted his liminal position, while Zhu is actively performing a false identity.

4. What does the Prince of Radiance's explanation about the Mandate and ghost-sight suggest about the relationship between supernatural perception and political legitimacy?

The Prince's explanation suggests that the ability to see the spirit world is a consequence of the Mandate of Heaven—that those who hold cosmic power are more attuned to the threads connecting all things. This reframes Zhu's ability as a sign of legitimacy, or at least as evidence that she operates within the same cosmic framework as the Mandate. But it also raises a troubling question: if Zhu can see ghosts because she holds the Mandate, then her ability is not a sign that she is an imposter but a sign that she is, in some sense, chosen. The novel leaves this ambiguity unresolved, suggesting that legitimacy is as much a matter of perception as of fact.