"She Unnames Them" Literary Analysis

      Ursula K. Le Guin’s story “She Unnames Them” takes place when Adam and Eve roamed on Earth.  God gave Adam the power to name each individual animal as he pleased, but this caused Eve to feel a separation between her and the animals.  She felt like the names did not suit the animals and that by naming them, they were naming its essence and determining its sacredness.  She started to unnamed them one by one and felt the barrier between them getting smaller and smaller.  The animals accepted their loss of identity from their general names.  Once the animals’ names are removed, there is no separation from predator or prey.  Eve feels that she is “so close that her fear of them and their fear of her became one same fear.”  She and the animals are now equal, without knowing the hierarchy of each individual.  Eve begins to realize that words are powerful and they should be chosen carefully.  She even questions her own name that God and Adam had given her.  She tells Adam, “It’s been really useful, but it doesn’t exactly seem to fit very well lately.”

     In the story Eve describes how the animals feel about their names.  The animals “accepted namelessness with perfect indifference,” but the pets remained unsure.  Not only were they given generic names, but personal names as well such as “Rover, or Froufrou, or Polly.”  The pets are closest to man, so it is not surprising that they would feel that their names belonging to them were important. 

     Ursula Le Guin’s story “She Unnames Them” takes on a very ecofeminist approach.  Eve wants to be one with nature and feel connected to the animals around her.  Once she had taken away the animal’s generic names, she felt “the desire to smell one another’s smells, feel or rub or caress one another’s scales or skin or feathers or fur, taste one another’s blood or flesh, keep one another warm.”  She finally felt the serenity of being and the equality of nature.  By taking away their names, the barrier between them is broken and she feels vulnerable to the world.   

     “She Unnames Them” also revolves around the theme of power.  God gives Adam the power to name, but Eve seemingly takes away that power by unnaming the animals in which he gave them to.  The hierarchy of man is lost because she is now equal to man.  She has claimed the power of language that was not given to her.  She defies the social class that God had put on humans and animals.  Eve even gives her name back to Adam in order to join the classless society she has built. 

     Ursula K. Le Guin’s story “She Unnames Them” allows the reader to contemplate the complexity of titles and how reality is often categorized.  She makes the audience question whether the names objects and animals are given are a way of respect or a creation of separation.  Eve does not want to feel close to an animal by the association of its name but rather its existence on Earth and its connection with nature.