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St Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolf Analysis

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Most people do not have to remind themselves of things like not chewing on their shoes or being shunned, but in “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell, Claudette is forced to worry about both, along with many more. Through Claudette’s journey she is faced with several obstacles and challenges that test her commitment and determination to become “civilized and ladylike, couth and kempt” (237). Claudette makes the transition from wolf to human girl by beginning to act more civilized with a changed mindset and separating herself from the pack. Throughout this story, the wolf pack is forced to go through a drastic change in their lives. Prior to St. Lucy’s Home Claudette, Jeanette, Mirabella, and the rest of the pack only worried about things like food and survival, as well as the pack as a whole. Then all of the sudden, they are forced to leave their families and come live with the nuns at St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves so they may become civilized human girls. Their ability to adapt determines whether or not they are successful and are able to function in society. Each member of the pack must focus on their …show more content…

An initiation story can be described as, “When a character learns a significant truth about the world, society, people, or himself or herself” (Mays 131). In Claudette’s case, she learned how to go from a wolf girl who was a part of the pack, to an independent human girl. This transformation was a success for Claudette because if she was like Mirabella and could not adapt, then she would have been shunned from both the pack and her family, who sent her there in the first place. Also, the transformation was both mental and physical, as both her body and her mindset go through a drastic change. The reader can see Claudette’s transition from a wolf girl to a civilized human girl throughout the

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989 Words | 4 Pages

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.

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Mowat’s rhetorical strategies Wolves for thousands of years have been one of man’s greatest enemies. In Farley Mowat’s book, published in 1963, he makes us rethink why we are still at war with this species. Never Cry Wolf is about Mowat’s adventure as he studies wolves in the Northern Canadian Plains. His research brought him to become friends with Eskimos and a small family of wolves that he’s learned to respect and love. During his six month period he learns that wolves have been wrongly judged and are not the beasts that they have been titled.

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462 Words | 2 Pages

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).

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922 Words | 4 Pages

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.

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1067 Words | 5 Pages

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.

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758 Words | 4 Pages

They think they can bend the rules and do what they think is necessary. Jeannette is exposed to these understandings, making her the person she grew up to be. Jeanette demonstrates how she struggles with her family throughout numerous portions of the novel: “The Desert,” “Welch,” New York.” These struggles developed and defined who she came to be.

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923 Words | 4 Pages

Also, with the help of Ootek, a local Eskimo he was able to understand how wolves communicate and hunt, and he saw that these wolves were not a tremendous threat to the caribou. This book gives the reader a view into the life of these wild animals and how they all work together in their unique environment. Mowat had many doubts, but he slowly understood the truth about wolves. He also spent time following the wolves as they hunted and he examined their techniques. Mowat even experienced close up encounters and the wolves did not treat him like a foreigner.

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914 Words | 4 Pages

Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, the girls have their identity stripped away from them. While Miura chooses to leave behind her “real self,” the way she performs in Japan, in order to please the audience, the girls of St. Lucy’s do not have a choice; if they want to succeed, they will be forced to change their performance of race. In both cases, whether intentional or unintentional, the race that surrounds them uses their majority to dominate the minority race. In Miura’s situation, she understands the need to perform differently for different audiences. However, the girls of St. Lucy’s have only known the “wolf way” of life and must change for “survival” purposes.

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785 Words | 4 Pages

People who endure dislocation feel out of place and have many mixed emotions. Karen Russell’s “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” tells the story of a group of girls who suffer from lycanthropy including Jeanette, Claudette, and Mirabella. The “pack” of girls go through many stages to rehabilitate to their human identity. The girls experience culture shock and have to work as they progress through the stage.

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1429 Words | 6 Pages

In the short story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” author Karen Russell develops the narrator, Claudette, through the use of five “stages” to show her progression from her wolf identity to the human culture. This short story follows a group of girls raised by wolf parents through their journey at St. Lucy’s, which is a rehabilitation center for human children raised by wolf parents. Throughout their time at St. Lucy’s, the girls are expected to experience five distinct stages as they adapt. Each of these stages is described by a fictional text entitled The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock. The nuns at St. Lucy’s use it as a guide for teaching their students.

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1455 Words | 6 Pages

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.

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1580 Words | 7 Pages

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).

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504 Words | 3 Pages

“I narrowed my eyes at Kyle and flattened my ears, something I hadn’t done for months” (Russell 243). Even though Claudette is almost at the end of stage four, she still fails to deminish her wolf instincts. Having the wrong mindset forces Claudette to forget what she has previously learned and return back to her wolf instincts. As much as Claudette wishes to adapt to the human culture, instinctive habits and hopes cause her to not

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721 Words | 3 Pages

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.

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705 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel of the Call of the Wild, Buck tried to adapt to his new and difficult life. He was forced to help the men find gold; he experienced a big transformation in him. At the end, he transformed into a new and different dog. Buck went through physical, mental and environmental changes. In my essay, I talked about how Buck was like at the beginning, what he changed into, and how he was forced to adapt his new environment, and underwent these changes.

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