Identity and Naming in The Vaster Wilds: The Girl’s Struggle for a Self Beyond Colonial Definition

Thematic Claim: Names as Instruments of Power, and the Search for an Uncolonized Self

In Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds, the unnamed protagonist’s shifting labels—abandoned, imposed, and finally rejected—map her fight to forge an identity not shaped by colonial authority. Each name she carries is a tool of control: the religious “Lamentations,” the dehumanizing “Zed,” the generic “Girl.” Her flight into the wilderness becomes a quest to shed these colonial markers and discover a self that exists before or beyond naming. The novel ultimately suggests that true freedom may require remaining nameless, outside the systems that use naming to dominate.

Tracing the Theme Across the Plot

The Fort: Names as Insults and Ownership

In the colonial fort, the girl is known by multiple names, none of them chosen. “Lamentations Callat” was bestowed at the poorhouse—a cruel joke on her orphan status, labeling her a walking woe. When the mistress purchases her as a replacement for a dead pet, she renames the child “Zed,” after the monkey. This act strips the girl of human dignity and cements her role as a possession. Even the tender name “girl” marks her as generic, interchangeable. The evidence from Chapter 9 shows that the mistress called her Zed in jest, while others tried to remember her “true name, Lamentations.” These are not names but brands, each tied to a different form of subjugation: religious guilt, commodification, and invisibility.

The Wilderness: Reclaiming the Power of Naming

In Chapter 15, the girl directly confronts the act of naming. She recalls all her previous names and finds none fully hers—not even “Mine-heleafda,” the glassblower’s endearment, though it came closest. As she travels deeper into the forest, she feels “walking through the world unskinned” without a name. But she also understands that naming can be a form of power. Inspired by Adam, she begins naming the trees and animals around her: “Maiden-neck,” “Virago bird,” “Hellspeck.” This act is exhilarating, yet she soon recognizes its danger—that naming led Adam to believe he owned the world, just as English colonists believe their names give them dominion over the land and its people. The girl’s self-awareness complicates her desire for a name: she wants one, but she refuses the colonial model of ownership. Instead, she leaves herself unnamed, “unmastered,” traveling as a free being through the wilds.

The End: Dying Beyond Names

In the final chapters, the girl’s identity dissolves entirely. She imagines a second self who survives alone for decades, but that self dies nameless, too. When she chooses not to fight for life, she surrenders the very idea of a coherent self. The vision teaches her that a life without human connection is not worth living; names are meaningless in isolation. Her last thoughts bless an ant and merge with the wind. The novel ends with her “essential self” passing into nothing—no afterlife, no name recorded. This ultimate namelessness is not loss but liberation. She has escaped every label imposed by her past and by colonial society, entering a state beyond identity.

Character and Symbol Connections

The Mistress renames the girl Zed, treating her as a pet. She embodies the arbitrary power of the colonizer to erase and rename.
Bess is the one person who never names the girl. Their relationship is wordless, built on touch and care. Bess’s refusal to engage in the “machinery of domination” (by not speaking or naming) makes her a symbol of resistance.
The Glassblower gives her the name “Mine-heleafda,” the closest to her true being. Yet he is dead, and his name cannot be reclaimed.
The Minister and The Soldier use naming as violence: the Minister beats her for drinking soup; the soldier tracks her as “femina,” a creature to be hunted. The soldier’s belated realization (“Femina… arriving too late”) shows how naming fails to capture her essence.
The River is a boundary she crosses without being named. It carries her away from the soldier and into self-determination.
The Vulture appears at her death, a carrion bird that does not name but consumes. It is a natural, non-colonial presence.
Fire in the wilderness is a tool she masters; she even names her fire-starting as an act of survival, not domination.

Complexity and Contradiction

The girl’s relationship with naming is contradictory. She wants a name of her own, yet she suspects that naming is an act of domination. She feels “unskinned” without a name, but she also feels free. The novel does not resolve this tension: she never finds a permanent name, and in death she rejects identity altogether. This may imply that any name, even one chosen, is a cage. The very act of naming a supposedly “new” world erases the names that already exist—a point she realizes when she wonders about the names the Indigenous people have for things. Her final state of namelessness is both a surrender and a victory, a refusal to participate in the game of power that naming enables.

Study Questions and Answers

Why does the girl feel “unskinned” without a name in the wilderness?
She has always been defined by others’ names. Without one, she lacks the social identity that made her legible. Yet this discomfort also signals her incipient freedom from colonial definitions.
How does Bess’s muteness relate to the theme of naming?
Bess refuses to engage with language and names, which the girl interprets as a deliberate exit from the “machinery of domination.” Bess’s silence embodies a rejection of the power structures that naming upholds.
The girl names trees and animals in Chapter 15. What does this teach her about power?
She realizes that naming gave Adam dominion over creation, and that English settlers use naming to claim ownership of a place that already had names. This insight makes her reluctant to name herself, lest she replicate colonial violence.
Why does the glassblower’s name “Mine-heleafda” feel most true to her?
It is the only name given in tenderness, not as an insult or brand. It suggests a private, loving identity outside the public colonial system. However, he is dead, and the name cannot be resurrected.
How does the novel’s ending resolve the search for identity?
It does not resolve it; instead, it transcends it. The girl dies nameless, her self dissipating into the wind. This suggests that true identity may lie beyond naming, in a state of pure being that colonial power cannot touch.