Karen Russell’s “St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” tells the story of a group of girls who experience lycanthropy. The girls go through five stages of rehabilitation on their journey to human identity. An epigraph before each stage is included to help with the organization and structure of the story. It also includes behaviors rehabilitators should expect from the students and is taken from The Lycanthropic Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock. The rehabilitators use the handbook to understand how the students might react to the different stages. There are many characters but is written from the perspective of Claudette, who’s reactions differs throughout the five stages. Stage 1: The initial period is one in which everything …show more content…
They feel many mixed emotions and struggle to keep themselves composed during this time. At the beginning of Stage 2, Claudette struggles to conform to the new form of locomotion. Claudette repeats over and over again, “Mouth shut, shoes on feet,” and was “...stumbl[ing] around in a daze, my mouth black with shoe polish” (229). Claudette works very hard to adapt but struggles as she becomes very distraught. Claudette felt “irritated, bewildered, depressed…” and overall felt very “uncomfortable…” (229). Claudette did not like her new surroundings and felt very homesick as a result. As time passes by, Claudette becomes frustrated and very upset with the host …show more content…
They make generalizations and doubt the host culture’s lifestyle. In this stage, Claudette mirrors the epigraph very well and shows the attitudes depicted. In Stage 3, the girls met their first purebred girls. Claudette began to judge them almost immediately and made generalizations about them. Claudette describes them as “apple-cheeked fourth-grade [girls]” with “frilly-duvet names like Felicity and Beulah” (237). Claudette felt superior to the purebred girls and made fun of their appearance and names. Because of this, Claudette “felt sorry for them” and “wondered what it would be like to be bred in captivity, and always homesick for a dimly sensed forest, the trees you’ve never seen” (237). Claudette felt that her wolf culture was far superior to the behaviors and actions of the human culture. As the Claudette begins to settle into the new environment, her attitudes towards the host culture dwindle and begins to feel more
Through all the stages of Lycanthropic Culture shock in “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by wolves” by Karen Russell, the girls will be making a cultural change. The pack will have to adjust to the “human culture. ” While they are assimilating into this culture, they are going to have to make progress quickly, adapt, and over all, enjoy their new culture. The girls must progress quickly because the monks are expecting them to hook on quickly.
Claudette take dainty bites of peas. It shows that she’s changed out of the wolf culture and is starting to get use to the human culture and starting to eat human food. “If we were back home, and Mirabella had come under attack: I would have warned her. But the truth is that by stage 3 I wanted her gone.” This change means something.
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.
She is not comfortable in the human culture if she resorts to her natural tendencies. While she is preparing to dance, she, “rubbed a pumpkin muffin all over [her] body earlier that morning,” (Russell 242) to mask her scent. This action not only creates humor but also shows that Claudette is not ready to go back and forth from human culture and wolf culture. Normal humans would use perfume to mask a smell, Claudette chose to use a pumpkin muffin because she knew it would mask her odor. This is not a human action, therefore, she does not meet the expectation of Stage
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.
The way Louise Erdrich uses symbolism in her story “I’m a Mad Dog Biting Myself for Sympathy” portrays a quest of a native american for love. From the repetition the symbols it gives the story a more unified feel and adds a deeper meaning. The narrator has come from a rough and neglectful life, saying, “My parents. It’s not like I hate them or anything. I just can’t see them.
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.
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
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.
The pack hated Jeanette. She was the most successful of us, the one furthest removed from her origins. ”(Russell 232). Claudette was jealous of Jeanette because she was the “top girl” and was always successful at everything she did. Claudette knew that she could never be as successful as Jeanette and she envied that.
Claudette tried her best to adapt to the humans culture and all the feral children had spent months learning to assimilate into human culture. However, despite her perseverance through all these challenges, some of the wolf in them still remained. This would later cause Claudette to stand out in both societies due to the wolf characteristics that still remained (thus not fitting in with the human societies) and the human characteristics that she learned (thus not fitting in the the werewolf societies). Feral diction also appeared in the story when Claudette attempted to dance to sausalito with Kyle. When she stepped onto the dance floor, the panicked and the feral part of her returned; Russell writes, “I threw back my head, a howl clawing its way up my throat” (250).
Paul Ryan once said, “Every successful individual knows that his or her achievement depends on a community of persons working together.” Individuals must strive upon excellence based on the society they are placed in. Watching how others react can help one become the best they can be. Throughout The Glass Castle, Jeannette is exposed to society by her parents. Her parents, Rex and Rose Mary, see society in different means than how others perceive it.
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
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 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).