Fate vs. Self-Determination in She Who Became the Sun: A Theme Analysis
The Thematic Claim: Fate as a Contest, Not a Sentence
In She Who Became the Sun, fate is not a fixed decree handed down by Heaven—it is a contest. The novel asks whether a person can escape the destiny assigned to them by prophecy, society, or circumstance, and answers with a qualified yes: escape is possible, but only for those willing to want another fate badly enough to struggle, suffer, and sacrifice for it. The recurring opposition between nothingness and greatness frames this contest. To accept your assigned fate is to risk becoming nothing; to pursue greatness is to risk losing yourself in the process. The novel ultimately suggests that self-determination is real but never free—and that the person who emerges on the other side of the struggle may no longer recognize themselves.
The Prophecy and the Theft of a Fate
The novel opens with a fortune-teller's verdict that splits the Zhu family's children into two destinies. Chongba is told he carries a seed of potential and is destined for greatness; his sister is told her fate is nothing. The girl's immediate understanding of this word is telling: she realizes that nothing does not mean mere insignificance but death itself. When bandits attack the family home, her father offers her to them as a sacrifice—something that could be spent to benefit those who mattered—and the bandits reject her as worthless. The fate of nothing, she understands, is to be expendable.
Chongba's death from shock and grief gives the girl an unexpected escape route. She takes his clothes, his amulet, and his name, and presents herself at Wuhuang Monastery as Zhu Chongba. This is the novel's first and most audacious act of self-determination: a girl who was told she was nothing simply decides to become someone else. But the novel is careful to complicate this act. When she deliberately falls into the bathhouse pool to avoid being discovered as female, she feels a relief so radiant that it felt like joy and concludes that she has done the impossible: she has escaped her fate. Yet the scene also shows Heaven inspecting the shell of Zhu Chongba, sensing an irregularity within. The escape is real, but it is also precarious—a deception that must be maintained against cosmic scrutiny.
The Monastery: Choosing to Become Greatness
The novel's most explicit statement of its thematic claim comes when the monastery is destroyed and Zhu is expelled into the outside world. Facing the choice between greatness and nothingness, she articulates her philosophy: if the outside world contains both, then the only escape from one is to become the other. Zhu Chongba had been fated for greatness; if she must live in the world, she will be Zhu Chongba so completely and utterly that she achieves his fate and survives.
This passage is crucial because it reframes fate as something that can be inhabited rather than merely inherited. The girl does not simply pretend to be her brother; she becomes him, subsuming her every difference until even Heaven believes they are a single person. The novel leaves open the question of whether this is genuine self-determination or a different kind of submission—she is still pursuing a fate assigned to someone else. But Zhu's own understanding is clear: desire is the engine of fate. The epigraph's Buddhist teaching warns that desire is the cause of all suffering, and Zhu acknowledges the cost. All she has ever desired is to live, and she knows she will suffer for it. She cannot imagine the magnitude of suffering that greatness will require, but she accepts it anyway.
The Price of Self-Determination
The novel dramatizes that cost repeatedly. At the Grand Canal, Ouyang cuts off Zhu's right hand, and she nearly dies. In the aftermath, she experiences the nothingness as relief—a moment of surrender that suggests how close she has come to losing herself entirely. But she survives, and her survival becomes a kind of proof: she realizes she survived because she was not Zhu Chongba. The severed hand becomes a symbol of the price of greatness—a physical sacrifice that marks her body as the site of her ambition.
The most devastating cost comes in the novel's final chapters. Zhu kills Prime Minister Liu Futong, declaring that the Mandate is hers, and then kills the Prince of Radiance himself when the child tells her that neither Liu Futong nor Zhu Chongba will rule. Her justification is a full articulation of her philosophy: anyone who wants a fate other than what Heaven gave them must want it, struggle for it, and suffer for it. Liu Futong, she argues, never did anything for himself, and when she took the Prince from him, he had nothing and became nothing. Zhu, by contrast, has struggled and suffered to become the person she needs to be.
But the novel refuses to let this be a clean victory. Zhu acknowledges to herself that she does not have to kill the child—she could walk away and still survive. She chooses greatness anyway, not even for a child's life or the suffering of those she loves. And the Prince's final prophecy—that neither will Zhu Chongba rule—hangs over her triumph. She has proclaimed herself Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, but the novel suggests that the identity she stole may not be the one that rules. The fate she claimed may still be slipping away from her.
Ouyang: The Prisoner of Fate
Zhu's arc is defined by her refusal to accept her assigned fate. Ouyang's arc is the mirror image: a man who believes he has no choice at all. When he realizes that his defeat by the monk and his shaming at Chaghan's hands have all led to an opportunity he both wants and dreads, he reads it as the mechanistic motion of the stars bringing him to the path of his fate. He concludes that it is not a matter of choice—it is his fate, the thing no man can ever refuse.
Ouyang's fatalism is partly a product of his position. As a eunuch in the Mongol court, he is reviled for not being a man, and he has internalized the belief that his fate is fixed by what was done to him. But the novel complicates this: Ouyang does make choices. He chooses revenge against Esen's family, he chooses to march on Dadu, he chooses to kill Esen. His belief that he has no choice is itself a choice—a way of avoiding responsibility for the suffering he inflicts. The contrast with Zhu is instructive: both characters pursue greatness through violence, but Zhu claims her violence as self-determination while Ouyang disowns his as fate.
Ma Xiuying: The Limits of Wanting
Ma Xiuying offers a third perspective on the theme. When Zhu tells her to learn to want something for herself, Ma recognizes the truth of the advice but also its limits. A man could want anything the world offered and still have a chance of achieving it, she reflects, but she is a woman trapped in a woman's life, where everything that could be wanted is equally impossible.
This passage is the novel's most direct acknowledgment that self-determination is not equally available to everyone. Zhu can escape her fate because she can pass as a man; Ma cannot. The novel does not resolve this inequality—Ma ultimately chooses to rise with Zhu, appearing in red to pledge herself as his Empress—but it registers the cost. Ma's arc suggests that the novel's thematic claim is not a universal one. The ability to choose your fate is itself a privilege, and the novel is honest about who gets to exercise it.
Complexity and Contradiction
The novel's treatment of fate is deliberately contradictory. Zhu believes she has chosen her fate, yet she also feels that old vertiginous pull of fate and acknowledges that it comes from the outside world, where greatness is made. She wonders whether her fate changed when she became Zhu Chongba, but immediately rejects the thought: that heaviness is a promise of the inevitable. The novel keeps both possibilities alive: Zhu is both the author of her destiny and its prisoner.
The Prince of Radiance's final prophecy deepens this ambiguity. If neither will Zhu Chongba rule, then the identity Zhu has inhabited for years is itself a false fate—and the greatness she has achieved may belong to someone else entirely. The novel ends with Zhu proclaiming herself Zhu Yuanzhang, but the reader is left wondering whether this is a new self-determination or just another borrowed fate.
Study Questions and Answers
1. What does the fortune-teller's prophecy mean for the girl, and how does she reinterpret it?
The fortune-teller tells the girl her fate is nothing, which she initially understands as insignificance and then as death—her father offers her to bandits as a disposable sacrifice. She reinterprets this fate by refusing it: when her brother dies, she takes his identity and his destiny. Her understanding of nothingness shifts from a fixed sentence to a condition she can escape by becoming greatness instead.
2. How does Zhu's philosophy of desire differ from the Buddhist teaching in the epigraph?
The epigraph, drawn from the Fire Sermon, teaches that desire is the cause of all suffering and that all things burn with the flames of passion, hatred, and infatuation. Zhu accepts the premise—she knows her desire will cause her to suffer—but rejects the conclusion. Instead of renouncing desire, she embraces it as the engine of her self-determination. She is unafraid of suffering, and her desire to live becomes the force that drives her to greatness.
3. Why does Ouyang believe he has no choice, and how does the novel complicate this belief?
Ouyang reads his circumstances as the mechanistic motion of the stars and concludes that his path is his fate, the thing no man can ever refuse. The novel complicates this by showing him making choices throughout—choosing revenge, choosing to kill Esen, choosing to march on Dadu. His fatalism functions as a way of disowning responsibility for his actions, in contrast to Zhu, who claims her choices even when they are terrible.
4. What does the severed hand symbolize in relation to the theme?
The severed hand represents the physical cost of pursuing greatness. When Ouyang cuts off Zhu's hand, she nearly dies and experiences nothingness as relief—a moment of surrender to the fate she has been fleeing. Her survival, and her realization that she survived because she was not Zhu Chongba, suggests that the cost of self-determination is not just physical but existential: she must keep becoming someone else to keep escaping her fate.
5. How does the Prince of Radiance's final prophecy complicate Zhu's triumph?
The Prince tells Zhu that Liu Futong was never going to rule, but neither will Zhu Chongba. This suggests that the identity Zhu has inhabited—the fate she stole from her brother—is itself a false destiny. Zhu has proclaimed herself Zhu Yuanzhang, but the prophecy implies that the greatness she has achieved may not belong to the person she has become. The novel ends with her triumph shadowed by the possibility that her self-determination has only led her to another borrowed fate.