St Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves Short Story

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.
Firstly, color imagery emphasizes the key theme of unity. Behind St. Lucy’s, the church that the wolf girls have been taken to, there were “blue woods humming for miles behind it” (Russell 238). The color blue represents unity and the idea of sticking together. The pack grows up together in the woods and classifying the woods as blue suggests that the woods is an integral part of their unity. They used to live together in the woods and they miss being a part of the family that breaks apart when they start to become human. The longing for family binds the wolf girls closer together, as in their minds they have nobody left except themselves to rely on after their parents abandon them. Mirabella refuses to become human as she clenches her hands with “her fists blue-white from strain” (Russell 241). Blue