in the story ”St. Lucy 's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell, Claudette undergoes a difficult and overstimulating experience trying to be retaught so she can join the human world. It is clear that Claudette has most definitely adapted to the human world and it’s civilized background. The pack would have been ostracized by both the wolfs and the humans if not for her parents wanting better for them.
“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
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.
This work may be stressful, and students may experience a strong sense of dislocation. They may miss certain foods. They may spend a lot of time daydreaming during this period. Many students feel isolated, irritated, bewildered, depressed, or generally uncomfortable” (page 229). The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock states that once the wolf girls experience these negative sentiments, they have entered stage two. During stage two, Russell’s development of Claudette directly corresponds with the epigraph. Claudette found that she was always “irritated, bewildered, depressed… uncomfortable and between stages”(page 229). This lines up perfectly with the Handbook, which describes feelings of discomfort and dislocation among the pack. Claudette had even “begun to snarl at [her] own reflection as if it were a stranger,” showing that she is very uncomfortable with the changes that have happened to her, both physically and mentally. In Stage 2, when the girls had begun to drift apart, Claudette found where she fit in, explaining that she “was one of the good girls. Not great and not terrible, solidly middle of the pack” (Russell 232). This idea of Claudette being a good but imperfect character connects to her relation to the Handbook, as she mostly follows along with its expectations but occasionally lags
Adjusting to a different culture is not easy. This is what takes place in the short story, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell. The story is about a pack of wolf girls who are forced to live in a new cultural society. These wolf girls will have to disregard their past cultures and adapt to the ways of regular humans, like their parents wanted them too. How the wolf girls react to their new surroundings by finding everything new, exciting, and interesting is what makes the epigraph in stage 1.
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.
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.
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.
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 and she acts like a good student it is only because of the school’s expectations. Claudette wants to return back to her wolf culture so she pretends to have
A human’s emotions can be their greatest ally or worst enemy. Positive emotions such as desire and satisfaction primarily assume the role of motivation within a person. However, negative emotions possess an even greater motivational impact due to their ability to drive a person beyond their personal limits. For example, shame is a devastating emotion that causes feelings of inadequacy and failure. As a result, people strive to prevent shame to themselves and others at all costs. However, through these efforts to avoid shame, people are often pushed outside of their comfort zones and accomplish difficult and seemingly unreachable goals. Through her story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, Karen Russell establishes a main theme of
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. She proved that one must depend on others and their outside surroundings in order to successfully find their individuality and unaccompanied personality from the inside. Jeannette became an independent woman through her unintentional battles becoming an
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.
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 stage two of Karen Russell’s story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, the epigraph informs us that the girls will be working very hard and will experience stress which will cause emotional distress and periods of unhappiness. As well as that they must “..must work hard to adjust to the new culture”.The pack of girls felt as if they weren’t in their place or where they belonged. They didn’t find their purpose yet. The girls during this stage will experience feelings of being “isolated..,depressed, or generally uncomfortable” as they begin to adjust to their new environment.
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. Claudette’s actions align well with the five stages, but she has outbursts that remind her of her former self.