St Kucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves Character Analysis

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 and how the characters will likely act during the stage. However, in Stage 2, when the wolf-girls have started to adapt, it becomes evident that not all characters feel and act as the epigraph predicts. The differences between these characters and the epigraph help to develop them as individuals and showcase their underlying character traits. The epigraph for Stage 2 introduces a depressing tone, expressing the difficulties the students will experience as they begin to adapt. It explains that, during this Stage, the girls will learn that they must adapt to their new culture. They may feel pressure and will likely experience strong feelings of dislocation. They may also miss many of the foods they were accustomed to and may begin to daydream. Many students feel isolated, annoyed, confused, depressed, or generally uncomfortable during this