At St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, the girls go through the five stages of Lycanthropic shock. Lycanthropic shock is defined as the steps that the nuns use at St. Lucy’s to help the wolf-girls assimilate into the human way of life. When progressing from one stage to the next the girls will gain more and more human traits, and qualities whether they be good or bad. Going through the different stages proves to be more difficult for some girls rather than others. When the pack first arrived to St. Lucy’s at stage one they were still living, acting, and talking like wolf-girls and they began slowly moving up in stages. When they started progressing through the stages was when they started separating from one another based on their …show more content…
Most girls were fully bipedal and could do many other human things. But at stage two, there was already separation between the successful and the unsuccessful girls. Jeanette was the most hated of them all. At this stage Clausette had begun to learn one of the most prominent human characteristics, jealousy. “Then she would sing out the standard chorus, “Why can’t you be more like your sister Jeanette? 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. In stage 2 Claudette had also begun to develop a very self-centered attitude. “She was sure to eat the birds; Mirabella didn’t even try to curb her desire to kill things……..Who would get penalized with negative skill points? Exactly.” (Russell 234). Claudette began pushing Mirabella out and didn’t care about whether Mirabella needed help or not. Claudette was only worried about herself and how she would get penalized for something Mirabella couldn’t control. However there is much more to come as Claudette continues through the next three
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
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.
From the first stage to last in, “St.Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, Claudette’s actions and ways of progression remain true and consistent to what the text of Lycanthropic Culture Shock discusses. Claudette follows the path of becoming fully human and comfortable being so, as the handbook describes through her advancing efforts towards personal change, her actions and reactions to situations, and what she ponders about through the stages. Claudette’s unequivocal adaptation to human society being in precise comparison to each of the five stages of Lycanthropic Culture Shock, ascertains the fact that Claudette’s development through each stage of the St.Lucy’s text is directly parallel to the five stages of Lycanthropic Culture Shock rendered from The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture
While some of these skills may have been a little too out of control and could have been harmful for their children at times, some of these skills helped them become more independent and self reliant people. Without the rough childhood that Jeannette went through, who knows if she would have been able to become the successful person that she is
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.
“I was told that this inquiry was being made, and my reaction was the same as when I tried to join the Girl Scouts. I was apologetic for imposing such a burden” (122). At this point, the author has clearly manipulated the reader into feeling indignant at Jeanne’s treatment and the various injustices she is bearing. Again, the sedate tone sparks the reader into wanting to act. However, Jeanne just feels sorry.
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. Russell uses feral diction in “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” to prove that people cannot change who the are. For example, Kyle tried to talk to Claudette, but just succeeded in annoying her instead. Claudette immediately reacted and, according to the story, “I narrowed my eyes at Kyle and flattened my ears, something I hadn’t done for months” (249).
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.
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.
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.
Introduction The film, Mean Girls, a 2004 American teen comedy, focuses on female high school social “cliques” and their effects. In doing so, the movie brings up various topics of sociological relevance, with connections to two of the main topics discussed in the first semester of this course. This film’s characters and world tie into modern socialization and gender issues, giving sociologists a satirical in-depth view of the social hierarchy present in today’s youth—particularly concentrated in young female teenagers. The movie addresses gender stereotypes, socialization and assimilation into a complex high school environment, self-fulfilling prophecy, and various other concepts important to the development of a social self for teens in the
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).
In the short story “The Necklace,” people get to experience a character with a several character flaws. The story is written by Guy de Maupassant, about a self-obsessed woman, Mathilde Loisel, and the problems she has to endure due to her own faults. She believes that she deserves more than what she already possesses and disagrees with anything or anyone that goes against her beliefs. Ultimately, Mathilde’s character is portrayed as ungrateful, cowardly, and insecure.