Desire as a Consuming Force in She Who Became the Sun
The Fire Sermon and the Novel's Central Claim
The novel opens with an epigraph drawn from the Adittapariyaya Sutta, the Fire Sermon, which declares that all things burn with the fire of passion, hatred, and infatuation, and that human existence itself—birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair—is a source of burning. This Buddhist framing establishes the novel's central thematic claim: desire is not a neutral appetite but a consuming force that devours the self and everyone around it. The characters who burn brightest—Zhu, Ouyang, and eventually Ma Xiuying—are precisely those who refuse to extinguish their wanting, and the novel tracks the cost of that refusal in lives lost, identities destroyed, and futures immolated.
Zhu: From Survival to Greatness
Zhu's desire begins as something almost innocent: the wish to survive. After bandits kill her father and her brother Chongba dies of shock, the girl takes her brother's clothes and amulet and claims his identity. At the monastery, she reflects that monks are supposed to strive for nonattachment, but that was always impossible for her—she was more attached to life than any of them could understand. Her desire to live is so fundamental that it becomes inseparable from her breath and qi, and she knows she will suffer for it.
The monastery's destruction marks the turning point. When Ouyang arrives and burns the monastery to the ground, Zhu realizes she was always going to be expelled into the world of chaos and violence—of greatness and nothingness. Her response is to redefine her desire: if the outside world contains greatness as well as nothingness, then the only escape from one is to become the other. She vows to be so great that no one can touch her or come near her for fear of becoming nothing.
This is where the consuming nature of desire becomes visible. Zhu's desire to live transforms into a desire for greatness, and that greatness requires the consumption of others. At Bianliang, she kills Prime Minister Liu Futong with a knife, declaring the Mandate is hers. Later, when the Prince of Radiance tells her that neither Liu Futong nor Zhu Chongba will rule, she kills him too. Each killing is a step toward her fate, but each also consumes a piece of the world—and a piece of herself. The girl who wanted only to live becomes someone who cannot stop wanting, and the wanting devours everyone who stands in her path.
Ouyang: Revenge as Self-Consuming Fire
Ouyang's desire is revenge, and it is the most explicitly self-consuming desire in the novel. When he confronts the Abbot at the monastery, Zhu sees his inner self as clearly as if his face were transparent ice: shame and fury seething underneath the blankness. She realizes he had never wanted the Abbot to yield—he wanted the Abbot to refuse, so he could have the satisfaction of forcing him to feel his power. He had come desiring revenge.
Ouyang's revenge is lifelong. At Bianliang, he confesses that he has spent his life plotting the destruction of the family that slaughtered his own, and he has already killed Esen's father. When Esen refuses to fight, Ouyang kills him too, then addresses his Nanren army and declares they will march on Dadu to kill the Emperor. His desire has consumed his capacity for anything else—mercy, alliance, even self-preservation. He tells the Abbot that someone like him has no fear of suffering in this life or the next, because his desire has already burned away everything else.
The novel presents Ouyang's revenge as a mirror to Zhu's ambition. Both are driven by desires so fundamental that letting them go is more dreadful than any risk of pursuing them. But Ouyang's desire is purely destructive—it consumes him without building anything. Zhu's desire, at least, creates a kingdom. The contrast suggests that the consuming force of desire is not inherently good or bad, but it is always costly.
Ma Xiuying: Choosing to Burn
Ma Xiuying begins the novel as the character who has never wanted anything. When Zhu tells her she has never really wanted, she is taken aback—but she recognizes the truth of it. Her life is preordained: given to the Guo family, married to Little Guo, bearing his children, giving her daughters to other men. She tells Zhu sharply that monks teach desire is the cause of all suffering. Zhu's response is the novel's most direct articulation of the theme: suffering is worse than not suffering, because not suffering means not being alive to feel it. He tells her to learn to want something for herself, not what someone says she should want.
Ma's response is bitter and clear-eyed: maybe his suffering is worth whatever he wants to achieve, but hers wouldn't be. She sees that Zhu's desire is possible for a man—or someone who can pass as one—but impossible for a woman trapped in the narrow confines of a woman's life.
Her transformation comes later, when she sees Zhu in a body like her own and recognizes someone who seems neither male nor female, but something wholly of its own kind: the promise of difference, made real. Ma feels the rigid pattern of her future falling away, leaving only the blankness of pure possibility. She takes Zhu's hand and feels its warmth flow into her until the hollow space of her chest blazes with everything she'd never let herself feel. She is yielding to it, being consumed by it, and it is the most beautiful and frightening thing she's ever felt. She wants—freedom, desire, her life to make her own. And if the price is suffering, why does it matter when she would suffer no matter what she chose?
Ma's choice is the novel's most explicit acknowledgment that desire is a consuming force—and that the consumption can be chosen. She knows the cost. She chooses it anyway. Her yes is both an acceptance of desire and an acceptance of the suffering that comes with it.
Symbols: Fire, Red, and Ghosts
The novel's symbols reinforce the theme. Fire and flame is the most obvious: the Fire Sermon's burning, the monastery burned to the ground, the Prince of Radiance's consuming fire that fills the space between Heaven and earth with eerie red light. The Prince's radiance is described not as a drowning lamp flame but as a consuming fire—and Ma cannot shake the image of their new era awash in blood.
The color red carries the same double meaning. Red is the color of fortune and prosperity, but also of blood. When the Prince of Radiance's light drenches the world in red, Ma feels oppressed, unable to breathe. The red that should signal radiance feels more akin to darkness than light. The novel's red is the color of desire's promise and desire's cost—and it is the color Ma wears when she pledges herself to Zhu as Empress.
Ghosts appear throughout, and they are connected to the theme in a subtler way. Zhu sees ghosts at the monastery—the dead who linger because they are attached to the world. The monks' nonattachment is supposed to prevent this lingering, but the ghosts are evidence that attachment persists beyond death. When Ouyang's soldiers flow into the monastery hall, their bodies overlap those of the ghosts, dark replacing light. The living who are consumed by desire are, in a sense, already ghosts—their humanity burned away by what they want.
Complexity and Contradiction
The novel does not present a simple moral about desire. The Fire Sermon frames desire as suffering, and the novel's Buddhist context suggests that the solution is nonattachment. But Zhu explicitly rejects this: nonattachment was always impossible for her because she was more attached to life than anyone could understand. And the novel seems to endorse her rejection, at least partially. Zhu's desire is what allows her to survive, to rise, to become Zhu Yuanzhang. Ma's desire is what frees her from the preordained pattern of a woman's life. Desire consumes, but it also creates.
The contradiction is most visible in Zhu's conversation with Ma at the temple. Zhu tells Ma that desire is the cause of all suffering—and then immediately argues that not suffering is worse, because it means not being alive. The novel holds both truths at once: desire burns, and desire is the only thing that makes life worth living. The characters who refuse to want—the monks, the ghosts, the people who accept their fates—are not spared suffering. They are simply not alive to feel it.
The novel's darkest implication is that the consuming force of desire cannot be controlled. Zhu's desire to live becomes a desire for greatness, and that greatness requires killing the Prince of Radiance, a child, and anyone else who stands in her way. Ouyang's revenge consumes his entire life and ends with him killing Esen and marching toward Dadu. Even Ma, who chooses desire knowing the cost, is choosing to be consumed. The novel asks whether any desire can be held without being consumed by it—and the answer, for these characters, seems to be no.
Study Questions
1. How does the Fire Sermon epigraph frame the novel's treatment of desire?
The epigraph describes all things as on fire with passion, hatred, and infatuation, and lists birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair as additional sources of burning. It establishes that the novel will treat desire not as a neutral appetite but as a consuming force inseparable from suffering. Every major character's arc can be read as a variation on this sermon: Zhu's ambition, Ouyang's revenge, and Ma's awakening all involve being consumed by what they want.
2. How does Zhu's desire change over the course of the novel, and what does that change reveal about the theme?
Zhu's desire begins as the wish to survive—she is more attached to life than anyone at the monastery can understand. After the monastery is burned, her desire transforms into a wish for greatness: if the outside world contains greatness as well as nothingness, the only escape from one is to become the other. This transformation shows desire as a force that grows by consuming. Each achievement requires another sacrifice—killing the Prime Minister, killing the Prince of Radiance—and the desire never reaches a point of satisfaction.
3. How does Ouyang's revenge function as a consuming force, and what does it have in common with Zhu's ambition?
Ouyang's revenge is lifelong and all-consuming. He tells the Abbot he has no fear of suffering in this life or the next, because his desire has already burned away his capacity for fear. He kills Esen's father, then Esen himself, and marches toward Dadu. Like Zhu, he is driven by a desire so fundamental that letting it go is more dreadful than any risk of pursuing it. But his desire is purely destructive—it consumes him without building anything—whereas Zhu's at least creates a kingdom. The contrast suggests that desire's consuming force is not inherently good or bad, but it is always costly.
4. What does Ma Xiuying's choice to embrace desire reveal about the novel's attitude toward suffering?
Ma begins as someone who has never wanted anything, because her fate is preordained. When Zhu tells her to learn to want something for herself, she responds that his suffering might be worth what he wants to achieve, but hers wouldn't be. Later, she chooses desire anyway, feeling herself consumed by it and accepting that she would suffer no matter what she chose. Her choice suggests that the novel does not endorse nonattachment as a solution. Desire causes suffering, but not desiring is a kind of death—and the novel implies that being consumed by desire is preferable to never being alive enough to feel it.
5. How do the symbols of fire, red, and ghosts reinforce the theme of desire as a consuming force?
Fire is the novel's central symbol for desire, from the Fire Sermon's burning to the monastery burned to the ground to the Prince of Radiance's consuming fire. Red carries a double meaning: it is the color of fortune and prosperity, but also of blood, and Ma cannot shake the image of the new era awash in blood. Ghosts represent attachment that persists beyond death—the monks' nonattachment is supposed to prevent lingering, but the ghosts are evidence that desire outlasts even life itself. Together, these symbols present desire as a force that burns, stains, and haunts.