Sun Is Also A Star By Nicola Yoon

American essayist and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Passion without discipline leads to chaos.” This quote perfectly depicts the relationship between passion and reason. It recognizes that though passion drives people to pursue their goals, it must be regulated with discipline and reason. In Nicola Yoon’s The Sun is Also A Star, two teenagers, Daniel and Natasha, help each other understand the importance of balancing passion and reason as they fall in love. While Daniel follows his heart passionately, Natasha relies on reason to guide her decisions. Throughout the story, Yoon develops the message that one must strike a balance between passion and reason to avoid causing harm to oneself and those around them.

Through Natasha’s

In a conversation between Daniel and Natasha, Natasha tells him that she knows she wants to become a data scientist. Unsurprisingly, Daniel does not want to pick a path yet. He asks, “Why settle? Why choose the practical thing, the mundane thing?” (Yoon 101). The rhetorical questions Daniel uses ask readers if they want to aim for a “practical” and “mundane” life. They suggest that though practical, setting an ultimate goal to be a day job such as data science is simple, unfulfilling, and boring. More importantly, when he asks “[w]hy settle”, he emphasizes that one should strive to accomplish greater goals instead of being satisfied with what they already have. The word “settle” means to come to rest. By using it in a rhetorical question, Daniel reinforces Yoon’s idea that a person sabotages their aspirations by only centering their decisions around reason. Later in the story, Daniel meets Jeremy Fitzgerald, a Yale admissions officer, and they end up exchanging advice about their personal lives. Fitzgerald is an attorney and married father of two kids, but has an affair with Hannah Winter, his paralegal. Daniel knows this, and before he abruptly leaves the interview, he reminds the attorney that he “did all the things [he was] supposed to”, but still is “not happy” (Yoon 296). In this statement, the phrase “supposed to” refers to the obligations that

At the end of the story, Natasha shows her development as a person when she encourages her father to continue his dreams. She tells him that he needs to “at least try” and “[g]o on auditions”, and that he doesn’t “get to live in [his] head anymore” when they move back to Jamaica. (Yoon 328). Instead of resenting her dad for pursuing his dreams, she supports him. At first, this statement appears to contradict itself because Natasha tells her father to do the same thing that led him to “live in [his] head”. This metaphor directly refers to his inability to be present with the family because of his passion-related mental health struggles. However, by using contrasting ideas in her statement, she shows her understanding of Yoon’s point that passion is not destructive when moderated with logical thinking. This perspective did not emerge for Natasha until she met Daniel. The narrator says that after ten years, “[o]ne good thing did come from her time with Daniel. She looks for a passion and finds it in the study of physics” (Yoon 339). The word “good” highlights that Natasha’s choice to bring a bit of passion into her life rather than settle turned out well. Instead of aiming low for a boring job like data science, she trusted in both reason and passion, allowing her to do what she loves. Natasha learns the importance of moderation with practicality and passion