In the story, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, the author, Karen Russell, uses feral diction to establish that although people strive for perfectionism in their lives, people cannot become someone or something that they are not, thus causing a loss of identity. Russell uses feral diction in “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” to prove that people cannot change who the are. For example, Kyle tried to talk to Claudette, but just succeeded in annoying her instead. Claudette immediately reacted and, according to the story, “I narrowed my eyes at Kyle and flattened my ears, something I hadn’t done for months” (249). Feral diction is present in this quote through the phrases, “narrowed my eyes”, and “flattened my ears”. When …show more content…
Claudette tried her best to adapt to the humans culture and all the feral children had spent months learning to assimilate into human culture. However, despite her perseverance through all these challenges, some of the wolf in them still remained. This would later cause Claudette to stand out in both societies due to the wolf characteristics that still remained (thus not fitting in with the human societies) and the human characteristics that she learned (thus not fitting in the the werewolf societies). Feral diction also appeared in the story when Claudette attempted to dance to sausalito with Kyle. When she stepped onto the dance floor, the panicked and the feral part of her returned; Russell writes, “I threw back my head, a howl clawing its way up my throat” (250). The words, “howl”, and “clawing”, suggest that the animal part of them is still in them. In the real world, the word howl usually refers to wildness and to the wolves when they communicate and the word clawing, of course, also gives the feeling of a savage and is a bestial action. Just like the first quote, Claudette tries to change and modify her thoughts to one of a human, but the fact that she turns inhuman when she panics, it is obvious that she is just pretending to be normal. No matter how many obstacles Claudette
In the short story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” author Karen Russell uses short excerpts from a fictional text titled The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock to help provide a reference for characters’ progress throughout the 5 “stages” present in the story. These excerpts describe the differences between each “stage” and the difficulties that students may encounter while adapting to a new culture. These excerpts, also known as epigraphs, foreshadow the events that may occur in the upcoming stage and provide a frame of reverence for the characters’ progress level through the stages. This is particularly evident during Stage 2, where the characters begin to spread apart and their progress levels begin to reflect their personalities. While the majority of the characters in Stage 2 seem to follow the epigraph, there are a few characters that stick out from the rest.
This is made very clear in the beginning of the girls’ time at St. Lucy’s where Claudette is rowdy and unkempt. Later on, Claudette says that her new clothes are disorienting, this shows how even the simple earlier stages of assimilation are difficult for her. Furthermore, when she was forced to play a game with the purebred girls she growled and snarled, this was because she was uncomfortable
Thought out a persons ever changing life, the one thing that is always consistent is their name. However, sometimes a persons identity will change so much that their own name seems foreign when speaking it out loud. This creates the need for a new name to match a new identity. Kingsolvers The Bean Trees and Lena Coakley’s Mirror Image both apply characterization, conflict, and symbolism to show how identity changes with names and labels.
Diction varies between text as a children’s novel will have less advanced word choice than an academic paper. In Bill Bryson’s “How You Became You”, the diction plays a major role in advancing the purpose. The usage of words in this essay is very important as the author need to find a fine balance between alienating the audience through complex words and phrases and completely losing all credibility by sounding too lax and ignorant. Bryson skillfully maneuvers through both extremes and is able to entertain the audience while sounding knowledgable. Once again, we can look to the beginning of the essay for an example of Bryson’s diction.
In Karen Russell's short story, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, a pack of wolf-girls are sent to a church to transform them into human-girls. As they journey through their transformation there is a guide called, The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock that helps the nuns running St. Lucy’s. The book describes the transformation in stages to help determine the girls’ place as a human. Claudette, the narrator, arrives at St. Lucy’s with her pack to begin their transformation. She struggles through most of the stages, but succeeds in only a couple of them.
This proves itself by how Claudette took on a large dose of self-confidence and independence. At the installation of the fourth section, Claudette ignored Jeanette’s need for help and continued with what she needed to accomplish for herself to be successful at the time. Claudette’s confidence and independence shows her understanding of situations and comfort in her new life. Further along in the fourth stage, when the Debutante Ball began, Claudette had her hair swept “back into high, bouffant hairstyles” and was “wearing a white organdy dress with orange polka dots” while eating fancy hors d’œuvres (Russell 242). This display of comportement further shows her confidence and acclimation to the human culture through her ability to stand the high class situation.
In “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, Claudette, Mirabella, and Jeanette is taken to a foreign place to adapt to human nature. They are taken through the process of 5 stages of becoming human. Claudette, the speaker of the story, is stuck between two faces, the human and the wolf face. While Claudette is in between these two worlds, she has fully conformed from wolf to human. She has completed the transformation from wolf to human because her own mother doesn 't recognize her, trying to make herself seem more like human, and not even caring about her own fellow wolf mates anymore.
However, she still preforms bad wolf habits showing that she has not successfully adapted to the human culture. Little things such as translating wolf into English in her head before saying them is one example of the little things that go unnoticed. Still at stage three, Claudette wags her invisible tail, repeats the steps of being a well-mannored student, and licks her packs cheeks to comfort them. Claudette tries extremely hard to welcome her new culture but some things happen instinctively exhbiting that she is not ready to leave. For example, Claudette was at the dance and got mad at a boy so she instinctively displays her wolf personality.
The vivid imagery contrasts considerably with the speaker’s identity, highlighting the discrepancy between her imagined and true personas. The speaker undergoes a symbolic transformation into a boy, but in order to do so, she must cast away her defining features as a woman. One way she does this is by repositioning
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.
Despite her attempts, Dillard fails to present a compelling argument in either case to make the reader want to change their current way of life. In her attempts at appealing to her ethos, Dillard establishes herself as similar to most others to try and demonstrate that anyone can pursue this life, however, this merely serves to show that, like Dillard, few people have reasons to change their life. It also serves to show that even those who want to change their lifestyle will have the same difficulties that Dillard had in leaving her previous life and ways of thinking. The use of pathos further discredits Dillard’s argument by essentially establishing the weasel as a ruthless killer and then asking the reader to adopt its lifestyle as their own. Dillard presents a weak argument in her composition and relies on her detailed language and confusing analogies to convince the reader to senselessly adopt the life of a
Along with her sisters, she was tearing through rooms and smashing out lightbulbs. That is something a wolf would do. The fog in Claudette is now clearing up when she starts to wear shoes in Stage 2. “Keep your mouth shut, I repeated during our walking drills.
In the short story, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” written by Karen Russell, a pack of wolf girls leave their home in the woods for St. Lucy’s in order to be able to live in human society. Within the story, Russell has included epigraphs before each stage from The Jesuit Handbook for Lycanthropic Culture Shock. This handbook was for the nuns at St. Lucy’s to help guide their students. Karen Russell included the epigraphs, short quotations at the beginning of a chapter intended to suggest a theme, from the handbook to help the reader understand what the characters might be feeling or how they will act in a certain stage. In Stage One, the epigraph closely relates to the characters’ development, yet doesn’t consider that the girls could be fearful in their new home due to interactions with the nuns.
In Stage One, Claudette exceeds the standards the handbook sets. The handbook says that the girls will experience new things, full of curiosity and wonder of what is to come (225). Claudette exceeds this description, along with most other members of the pack. Throughout Stage One, each member of the pack has great curiosity of their surroundings, leaving a destruct wake in their path. The girls “tore through the austere rooms, overturning dresser drawers, pawing through the neat piles of the Stage 3 girls’ starched underwear, [and smashed] light bulbs with [their] bare fists” (225).
Craig isn 't sure he wants to work with a wolf shifter. He scored well enough on the tests that his precinct is sending him through the program, whatever he thinks about it . . . unless he can manage to flunk out. But the program proves to be both more interesting and more harrowing than he expected.