Have you ever been ostracized and put into a new environment? In the text St.Lucy's Home For Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell shows wolf girls being converted into a civilized community. Considering how Claudette feels after treatment at St.Lucy's, Claudette has not assimilated to human society. Despite Claudette´s accomplishments and struggles, Claudette has not converted from her origins and still has feelings about her past and can not be fully adapted for human society. Even with the help from St.Lucy´s they can almost never change a person for who they are, they will always have their natural instinct. Throughout St.lucy's home for girls raised by wolves,stages 1-4, Russell shows Claudette struggles of speaking English …show more content…
¨(Russell.227) In addition to the quote above, Russell shows that Claudette is struggling to leave her origins of her native talk, this shows by it being apparent that these are not civilized actions. Therefore showing that she is struggling with this foreign language that she is expected to learn. Following this, another example of her struggles is her having a diorenting change that is shown in the following quote, “It impossible to make the blank, chilly bedroom feel like home.¨(Russell.230) Considering this quote, Russell uses it to show that Claudette does not feel at home. Cludette feels lonely and blank within this desolate room compared to how she felt in her initial habitat.This is a struggle she faces within the beginning of not feeling at home. Drawing this together, Claudette is struggling to adapt to her new environment and the new language and receive an extensive culture shock. Even considering Claudetts struggles, Claudette has many accomplishments since she has learned to adapt slowly by drifting from her origins and becoming more …show more content…
Claudette isn't completely hating the place she is enjoying the chapel, considering how she despises the place at all at first this is a successful confidence to what the nuns want for the pack. Another example of one of Claudettes is when she can finally start to hold some of her primal instincts back; this can be shown in the following, “ “Why do you cry?” I asked her, instinctively reaching over to lick Jeanette’s cheek and catching myself in the nick of time.¨ (Russell.239) In addition to this quote, the way she is feeling is her natural response, but she has been ostracized and taught to not act in her natural way. This can be very disorienting to her, considering how she has been raised and how she is now all of a sudden not allowed to comfort someone the only way she knows how . Concluding the following Claudette has gained some accomplishments in rehabilitation learning how to not concave into her natural instincts and how she is starting to accept St. Lucy´s for what it is. Based on some of the struggles and accomplishments that Russle shows above, proves that Claudette has not successfully adapted to human
Claudette shows this when she was digging holes with her sisters (Russell, 227). Claudette complete wolf to almost human. During Claudette’s time at St. Lucy’s she becomes extremely happy to be in her
During the stages, she will go through many emotions and decisions to try and develop her character that relates to the stages in the story. At first, Claudette’s personality didn’t just belong to herself. She and her sisters had done the same activities together. “The pack used to dream the same dreams back then, as naturally as we drank the same water and
They make generalizations and doubt the host culture’s lifestyle. In this stage, Claudette mirrors the epigraph very well and shows the attitudes depicted. In Stage 3, the girls met their first purebred girls. Claudette began to judge them almost immediately and made generalizations about them. Claudette describes them as “apple-cheeked fourth-grade [girls]” with “frilly-duvet names like Felicity and Beulah” (237).
For starters, “I narrowed my eyes at Kyle and flattened my ears, something I hadn’t done for months. Kyle looked panicked” (Russell 243). This example shows that Claudette cannot help but to be aggressive toward others when she is panicked. Furthermore, she does not understand how to interact with others, proving that her time at St. Lucy’s has failed to eradicate her lycanthropic tendencies. Another jarring example is when Claudette explains that, “All of a sudden the only thing my body could remember how to do was pump and pump.
To demonstrate, when Mirabella jumps onto Claudette she needs to decide on what should happen next. Claudette states that “everyone was watching; everyone wanted to see what I could do” (Russell 245). Claudette now must make a choice, in this case, she became very bewildered and lashed out on Mirabella. Although, one may consider this as an eradicate outcome, it helped Claudette in the end. In stage five Claudette graduates from St. Lucy’s Home and then she returns “home”.
Throughout the story, Claudette faces many struggles as she navigates through her new life at her new school. One of the things she struggles with
In this instance we can see a different kind of abuse enacted onto Claude, “Now, all these years later, all my inner chaos remains hard to decipher. Why didn’t I join her and Jimmy and Annette? Why was I stranded? I couldn’t move. Why?”
She is not comfortable in the human culture if she resorts to her natural tendencies. While she is preparing to dance, she, “rubbed a pumpkin muffin all over [her] body earlier that morning,” (Russell 242) to mask her scent. This action not only creates humor but also shows that Claudette is not ready to go back and forth from human culture and wolf culture. Normal humans would use perfume to mask a smell, Claudette chose to use a pumpkin muffin because she knew it would mask her odor. This is not a human action, therefore, she does not meet the expectation of Stage
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.
While some of these skills may have been a little too out of control and could have been harmful for their children at times, some of these skills helped them become more independent and self reliant people. Without the rough childhood that Jeannette went through, who knows if she would have been able to become the successful person that she is
In stages, 1, 2, and 3 Claudette is going through stages to become more civilized. On Claudettes journey to conforming to human, she has faced many struggles in becoming human. To start, Claudette “...was irritated, bewildered, depressed”, her pack is “uncomfortable, and between languages.” She is struggling in becoming human because she is stuck between two barriers.
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
“I told him I that I would never lose trust in him, and I promised myself I never would”(76). At this point in the story, Jeannette is the only one who seems to still believe in her father. She looks up to him with a child’s eyes and always wants to be there for him. After failing her everyday, having faith in her father begins to be a struggle for Jeanette, and her tone changes. “If Francie saw the good in her father, maybe I was not a complete fool for believing in mine, or trying to believe in him.
She struggled with how the society and her family shaped who she was. She was exposed to her family first which made her behave the way she did under her family’s house. Jeanette struggled with her family by taking care of the house, beings told bending the rules is okay and the acceptance of her Mom’s and Dad’s homelessness. When Jeannette left her family and went to live in New York, she becomes an individual. She fends for herself and gets her life together.
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).