Saturday, February 8, 2025

Wall•E

Months ago, I was thinking about Eve's name in Wall•E.  Previously, perhaps even from the first time I saw the movie, I'd realized that although the acronym EVE stands for "Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator," there's also a connection to Eve in the Bible.  I had a limited understanding of this, however, just that in the same way that Eve in the Bible is present soon after Creation, Eve in Wall•E appears after the Earth's environment is once again able to sustain life.  Although it's still merely an association, there's a bit more to it than that since in Hebrew, the name Eve (חַוָּה) is related to חַי, a word meaning alive or living.

Probably just coincidentally, there's a further similarity between the Biblical Eve and the robot Eve in that each fulfills a specific lack of her mate.  Genesis 2 details Eve's creation:
The LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him."  Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.  And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.  The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.  But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.  So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.  And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.  Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man."
This same sort of situation is also in Wall•E.  Because all of his fellow robots have fallen into disrepair, Wall•E is basically alone.  Like Adam with the beasts of the fields and birds of the heavens, he has some degree of companionship with his pet cockroach, but his continual viewing of the hand-holding scene from Hello, Dolly! illustrates that he's yearning for something more personal.  Eve provides him with this more intimate relationship, and their holding hands evinces a parity that's similar to Eve's being "bone of [Adam's] bones and flesh of [Adam's] flesh."