Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Girl with Seven Names, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Oppression, Human Rights, and North Korea
Identity and Nationality
Family
Kindness
Summary
Analysis
In Long Beach, California, Hyeonseo Lee readies herself to go onstage. Hyeonseo is not the name she was born with, but it is the name she gave herself after reaching freedom. Hyeon is Korean for sunshine, and Seo means good. She has selected this name specifically to keep herself in “light and warmth.” The stage is big, and a voice asks if she is ready to go on. She walks onto the stage to sounds of clapping and is suddenly frightened. This is the first time Hyeonseo will tell her story in English.
Hyeonseo clearly has a very important story to tell if she is telling it from a stage to a roomful of people. The meaning of her name and her attempt to keep herself in “light and warmth” speaks to the cold darkness of North Korea, Hyeonseo’s home country, a place where electricity and heating fuel are sparse.
Themes
Hyeonseo feels tears well in her eyes. Her story is not unique for many North Koreans, but for those in the West, it is hard to believe that a country like North Korea exists. Still, Hyeonseo loves and misses her country. She misses the snowy mountain landscape and the smell of coal and kerosene. Leaving North Korea is like entering into another universe—and she can never go back. As a North Korean defector, Hyeonseo is now an exile. She has tried to fit in to South Korean society, but she doesn’t completely accept South Korean as her identity. It is easier to just say she is Korean, but a single unified Korea doesn’t exist. North Korea is still Hyeonseo’s country, and this is her story.
After the Cold War in 1948, the Soviet Union and the U.S. divided Korea into two separate states—the communist state of North Korea and the anti-communist state of South Korea. Hyeonseo’s love for North Korea, despite the awful things that have occurred there, is a testament to the connection people feel to their home countries and the mark nationality leaves on one’s core identity. Even though Hyeonseo can never return to North Korea, she still considers herself a North Korean—that connection is not severed when she defects.
Themes
