There are many literary devices used across stories. Color imagery is one of these literary devices that is used when colors give objects a symbolic meaning. In the short story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell, girls who have been raised as wolves are thrust into the unknown as they are forced to adapt to human society. Their childhood was spent living with wolves, however they are taken in by nuns of St. Lucy’s who attempt to assimilate them into the human world through different phases. Throughout the story, color imagery is used to emphasize the key theme of unity, establish the conflicted tone, and metaphorically develop Claudette’s character. Firstly, color imagery emphasizes the key theme of unity. Behind St. Lucy’s, the church that the wolf girls have been taken to, there were “blue woods humming for miles behind it” (Russell 238). The color blue represents unity and the idea of sticking together. The pack grows up together in the woods and classifying the woods as blue suggests that the woods is an integral part of their unity. They used to live together in the woods and they miss being a part of the family that breaks apart when they start to become human. The longing for family binds the wolf girls closer together, as in their minds they have nobody left except themselves to rely on after their parents abandon them. Mirabella refuses to become human as she clenches her hands with “her fists blue-white from strain” (Russell 241). Blue
Do you ever think about your parent’s sacrifices to give you a better future and how these actions will affect your life? In Karen Russell’s short story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, the author presents the story of a group of girls raised by wolves that are introduced to a new culture, an environment with new social norms that will help them to correct behaviors, interact, and adapt to society. Moreover, the theme of this short story is the social norms, stereotyping, and cultural and group identity, that a person may challenge when is a member of a different society and an unfamiliar culture. Besides, Mrs. Russell, emphasizes the theme of the story through the whole story, by revealing vivid descriptions of the girls’ behavior, appearance, isolation, and a self of belonging.
In Karen Russell's book “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” the girls learn what it is like to be human and how they adjust to our culture. The main character is a wolf girl named Claudette, we watch her go from cote human as she moves through the stages of Lycanthropic Culture Shock. During the first stage of St. Lucy’s home for girls Claudette has developed as the handbook (epigraph) tells her to. The handbook says that everything is new and exciting for your students and that they will enjoy learning about their new environment.
Through all the stages of Lycanthropic Culture shock in “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by wolves” by Karen Russell, the girls will be making a cultural change. The pack will have to adjust to the “human culture. ” While they are assimilating into this culture, they are going to have to make progress quickly, adapt, and over all, enjoy their new culture. The girls must progress quickly because the monks are expecting them to hook on quickly.
To move one-step up can sometimes mean pushing someone else down. In Karen Russell’s story,“St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” she conveys this adage through the story of girls who were raised by wolves for the first part of their lives. The story is told through the voice of one specific character, whose name is Claudette. She is the middle sister between Jeanette, the oldest, and Mirabella, the youngest.
Karen Russell’s “St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” tells the story of a group of girls who experience lycanthropy. The girls go through five stages of rehabilitation on their journey to human identity. An epigraph before each stage is included to help with the organization and structure of the story. It also includes behaviors rehabilitators should expect from the students and is taken from The Lycanthropic Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock. The rehabilitators use the handbook to understand how the students might react to the different stages.
Through the use of her short story, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Karen Russell tries and succeeds in pushing the idea that being civilized does not equal being better. All too often, being civilized automatically comes with an association of being greater than everyone, and anyone who is uncivilized is associated with being lesser or even unhuman. Russell’s goal in writing this short story is to throw away that bias and show that there is more than one way to live life. One of the main themes throughout this short story is the idea that what works for one person will not essentially work for another; there is no correct way to live life. A prime example of this theme is the obvious difference of standards of living between the nuns at St. Lucy’s and the pack of
Karen Russell’s short story, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, is about a pack of wolf-like girls who go to St. Lucy’s to learn how to adapt to a human life. The stages of adapting shows the character 's development and their traits throughout the story. There are many struggles as they adapt to human life, and epigraphs from The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock informs the nuns on what will occur at a certain point in time. Sometimes the epigraphs aren’t entirely accurate. However, Stage Two’s epigraph is quite accurate with its description to Claudette.
In the short story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” author Karen Russell uses short epigraphs to provide a reference for characters’ progress throughout the 5 “stages” present in the story. The story follows a pack of wolf-girls who have been sent to St. Lucy’s, a facility dedicated to helping human children raised by wolf parents adapt to human culture. These “stages” represent the five chapters in the process of adapting, each of which begin with an excerpt, or epigraph, from The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock. These epigraphs describe the emotions and difficulties that the wolf-girls are likely to experience, as well as how they are likely to act during the stage. In Stage One, the girls still acted as a pack,
In the book “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” There is an Lycanthropic culture handbook carried by the nuns that have five stages contain what should happen to the girls. In the story the packs parents send the girls off to the human world in hope that they would have a better life. All of the girls are having to learn how to adapt to there new life. One of the girls which is Claudette developed by the nuns handbook thought the five stages it the book. Claudette seems to follow the Lycanthropic culture shock which is the handbook used by the nuns.
Karen Russel’s narrator, Claudette in the short story “St. Lucy’s home for girls raised by wolves” has a guilty hope that she fails to adapt to her new human culture and exhibits her instinctive wolve traits showing that Claudette has not successfully adapted to the human culture. Claudette wishes to adapt to the human culture but has a difficult time accepting it. The St. Lucy’s home for girls raised by wolves is for girls to learn the human culture. The faster the girls go through the stages, the faster they have adapted and accepted their new culture and can be released. While Claudette acts as if the human culture is growing on her
As a parent, you wouldn’t send your child off with strangers, if you were lead to believe that those strangers could give your child a better life? In St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, by Karen Russell, children are taken from their home in the woods to a school which will teach them how to be civilized. The girls are raised by werewolf parents, but since the werewolf gene skips a generation, these children are not really werewolves. A group of nuns come to take them to a school to teach them to be human. In St. Lucy’s Home for Girls, Mirabella was a failure, slow, and destructive and was unable to adapt to her new life.
Brown is a particularly bleak and heavy colour however in difference to the greys and blacks there is a warmth to the colour that helps to deliver a message of hope for Mary. Whilst the colour schemes are different the similarity lies with both lifestyles depicting a sense of lacking and
The short story, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls raised by Wolves,” written by Karen Russell is about girls, who were raised by werewolves, being given lessons on how to act more civilized. For instance, the nuns at St. Lucy’s are teaching the girls how to speak, read, and understand english. Prior to their arrival at the home, they would speak in growls due to the fact their parents were werewolves. The nuns teach them english by giving them names and later they start assigning them books based on their reading level. Furthermore, the girls are, in a way, taught to be less compassionate.
In Karen Russell’s short story, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, she develops the progression of the characters in relation to The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock. The characters, young girls raised as if they were wolves, are compared to the handbook with optimism that they will adapt to the host culture. The girls’ progression in the five set stages are critical to their development at St. Lucy’s. The author compares Claudette, the narrator, to the clear expectations the handbook sets for the girls’ development. Claudette’s actions align well with the five stages, but she has outbursts that remind her of her former self.
Color is a huge part of how people view different emotions and feelings. For an example, when people see the color black, they may feel darkness and loneliness. Using color as a description in books can really help the reader better understand what the author is trying to get across. Color can mean so much more than shades and tints, it can show true meaning and emotion. It's proven that warm colors trigger thoughts of happiness, energy, and optimism.