Summary Of Karen Russell's St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves

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.

Analyze Claudette’s development in relation to the five stages of Lycanthropic Culture Shock. In ”St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, Russell Wolves”, Russell writes a short story regarding a group of girls, whose parents are werewolves. Their parents sent them to St. Lucy’s Home for Girls to be reformed into civilized humans and become functional members of society. The main character, Claudette, is developed by comparing her behavior in each stage The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock.

In “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” the nuns use a shockingly casual tone when speaking to the girls, as if they understand the sacrifices the girls are going to have to make. For example, when the girls first arrive at St. Lucy’s and are running rabid around the courtyard the sister asks, “And what is your name?”(239). The nun asks this question as if she is speaking to a girl who knows how to respond despite the fact she knows the girls can not speak. In “The Ruined Maid” the author uses word choice to set the tone.

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.

In the novel the author uses the elements of good and evil from fairy tales to have an opposite effect in the novel. In Little Red Riding Hood the reader can see that the girl plays the good character as she wants to help her sick grandmother. The wolf is seen as the evil character as he wants to destroy the girl and the grandmother. Little Red Riding Hood gains power over the wolf with help of the hunter, due to that she defeats the wolf alone “Red Riding Hood, however, quickly fetched great stones with which they filled the wolf 's belly, … , but the stones were so heavy that he collapsed at once, and fell dead”. This is a similar case for Beauty and the Beast.

Marilyn did not know of anyone by that name. She called Sunkissed to advise the company to move the heater indoors. She was afraid the heater might be damaged or stolen. The heater remained in her driveway for four days. When Marilyn noticed that the heater had been removed she again called Sunkissed, but she was told “not to worry.” When Sunkissed showed up to install the heater, they realized that the heater had been stolen.

In the short story Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell, nuns at St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised by Wolves try to turn a pack of young girls, including Claudette the narrator, whose parents are werewolves, into proper humans who can fit into society. Claudette struggles with balancing her wolf upbringing with the teachings of the nuns, and ends up conforming to the standards and morals of humankind. Her change from being a pack member to a human individual is seen in many places throughout the text. Although it is certain that Claudette grows to be human by STAGE 5, she has to struggle through the difficult and disorienting processes that are required in order to become human. There are several challenges that Claudette surpasses in order to abandon

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.

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.

When she told the men to see Colonel Sartoris, she was not aware that “Colonel Sartoris had been dead for almost ten years” (452) at that point. Emily kept her house the same way it had always been and was letting it decay while she stayed in it. She refused to clean or change the house at all to preserve it in the Old South. She did not want to accept the death of other people. When Emily’s father died, she refused the town from taking his body and burying it.