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Lycanthropic Culture Shock Character Analysis

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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 …show more content…

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. Nearing the end of Stage Four when Mirabella must leave St.Lucy’s for her behavior at the ball, Claudette packed a “tin lunch bail for [Mirabella]: two jelly sandwiches on saltine crackers, a chloroformed squirrel, a gilt-edged placard of St.Bolio” and left it with a little note (Russell 245). This discernable care for Mirabella and ability to make a lunch and most importantly, write a note shows Claudette’s amnetity with her newly attainable …show more content…

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

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Lucy’s was suggested as a guide to uniting the lycanthropy and human cultures, but the nuns had another plan. However, with their “wolf in sheep’s clothing” (267), Jeanette outwardly displayed her growing connection to the learned culture, but she still feels the connection to the woods. When reading a novel about wolves drinking from a pond in the forest (270). Jeanette starts crying because she longs for the naivety that existed pre-St. Lucy’s. Stripping these girls of their furs and comfort they are forced to adapt to the cold and isolate themselves to thrive.

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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

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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

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