Throughout “St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell, the members of the pack go from wild, degenerate wolf girls to [mostly] proper girls of human society. One pack member in particular, the main character Claudette, undergoes major transformations throughout the story. Her development, as with the development of the other girls, varies between rapid and a slower, more placid speed. How fast, and how much, she develops depends on the stage and the events that happen therein. There is much evidence to this point, Claudette’s directly relates to the stage that she is in, but despite her adaptations in the end Claudette cannot fully adapt to human culture. For example, looking at stage one, in which the new culture is at its …show more content…
The stage two epigraph is entirely correct about how wolf girls, or Claudette in this instance, react to being forced to adapt in this stage of the culture shock. True to its words, Claudette indeed becomes moody and homesick, and spends a lot of time daydreaming, as shown in the thoughts of Claudette: “Keep your shoes on your feet. Mouth shut, shoes on feet” [Russell 240] and “We spent a lot of time daydreaming during this period” [Russell 242], Claudette said in stage two, finding it difficult to adapt and change. These feelings, however, are more evidence to her development in this stage, showing that her mind has begun to leave the wolf mentality behind, and is now missing what it is losing. Her ability to be more or less bipedal in this stage is a forward development, and despite her troubles with eradicating many of her wolf mannerisms, she mostly moves forward in this …show more content…
For example, one of her steps forward in terms of development is her denial of help to Mirabella, a younger sister. By restraining her wild instincts, she makes one step forward, as she does in the church by learning to channel her feelings and emotions into singing. However, one sign that she hasn’t fully adapted yet is her frustration, impatience, and inability to hold her temper with the purebred girls, she says as much “’King me,’ I growled, out of turn. ‘I SAY KING ME!’” [Russell 245]. The real test of her ability to be human will come at the ball in stage
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. However, Stage Two’s epigraph is quite accurate with its description to Claudette.
What constitutes a person’s humanity? This is the question Karen Russell explores in her short story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.” Russell defines it as one’s individuality and their moral choices, as evidenced by the central idea of the story. This is reflected in the fact that the entire story is an allegory for the struggles of the Native American children in the 19th century. The main characters in the story are three wolf-girls, Claudette, Jeanette, and Mirabella.
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.
In this stage she is expected to feel comfortable in the human culture, and everything in the human culture will start to make sense (Russell 240). Claudette does not match the expectation in this stage due to the Sausalito dance. When she got to the dance, she met Kyle, her brother. Their conversations were very awkward, she, “narrowed my eyes at Kyle and flattened [her] ears, something [she] hadn’t done for months” (Russell 242 and 243) because she had changed into a human. She naturally resorted to her wolf like instincts to flatten her ears when she was in this awkward conversation with Kyle, meaning she has not met the expectation of the stage.
Analyze Claudette’s development in relation to the five stages of Lycanthropic Culture Shock. “St.Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, the short story written by Karen Russell, concenters on the narrator and primary character, Claudette who lived as though she was a wolf for the majority of her life. Once being sent to St.Lucy’s along with the rest of her pack, Claudette began to carve a new path for herself where she would become a well-rounded, decent human. The text, The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock that the nuns at the home follow as a guideline through the process of helping the girls adapt to the human culture, assumes how the pack, including Claudette, develop, act, and feel under the circumstances they state
“Win or lose, good or bad, the experience will change you,” says Richelle E. Goodrich. This directly relates to the character Catherine, in the book Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman. Catherine’s experiences led to her discovery of the need for change. Catherine gradually becomes more thoughtful, mature, and reflective as she has experiences like meeting Jews and the king’s cousin, or even just writing in her journal, that motivated her to change. Writing in her journal led Catherine to the discovery of the need for change.
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.
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
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.
When she was young, she could not process the way her father raised and treated her, so she believed everything he said. When she is able to understand, her tone changes and becomes clinical and critical remembering the way he constantly let her
Annabelle McBride, the main protagonist in Lauren Wolk’s Wolf Hollow, is forced to grow up in several harsh situations. In the novel, Annabelle witnesses unjust deaths and is forced to act alone when she is fighting to prove the innocence of Toby Jordan. He is a reclusive war hero, who some think is a mad man. He is being convicted for pushing Betty Glengarry, the antagonist of the novel, into a well. When Annabelle goes to Toby’s smokehouse in an effort to find him, when she blames herself for Betty’s death, and when Annabelle’s brother Henry gives Annabelle time to process in a hard time -- they are forced to grow up before they are ready.
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,” 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.
This shows that the girls still possess their animal instinct, but are overpowered with the strong sense of curiosity to the life that the humans live. Claudette even mentions that they had forgotten “the barked cautions of [their] mothers
While she was there, the old Jewish woman’s words finally gained some meaning. She realized that she didn’t have to be at her home to be herself, she would always be Catherine. This made Catherine more mature, she changed by knowing that she was, and would always be, herself. She says, “I am like the Jews in our hall, driven from England, from one life to another, and yet for them exile was no exile.” (Cushman 202).