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.
Someone once said, “ Life is a war, with blood shed and hate, but in that hate, love and warmth grows in the corner to show you, you are not alone.” This relates to Sal and Phoebe greatly, because of their similarities in their life, and their moms leaving, and them thinking the same way. In the book Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech, the struggles Phoebe faces in subplot are similar to the struggles that Sal faces in the plot. One of the significant struggles in both Sal and Phoebe’s lives is that both moms are sad and their daughters don’t notice. Both Prudence and Sal don’t realize that their moms are sad, and carry on with their day, like nothing's bothering them.
The moon is a fake, much like the characters in the story, much like the people in society. Lucynell also names her daughter after herself. As a result, the name Lucynell Crater, appearing twice, foreshadows the duplicity of the woman. Ultimately, the three protagonists in the story, Mr. Shiflet, Lucynell Crater, and Lucynell Crater junior, sample populate the world. O’Conner, through Mr. Shiflet and Lucynell, illustrates how duplicity and hypocrisy manifest in today’s society.
Lydia is a small, slender black woman in her sixties. (Brideau, Lydia’s story) The author met Lydia just before leaving Louisiana. Lydia lives in a shelter house of seventy-some people. She had an abscessed tooth but was unable to fix because of shortage of money (the X-ray was $25).
And Christopher Mulholland’s is nearly a year before that-more than three years ago’” (Page 66). It is highly peculiar for an extremely cheap bed and breakfast to have only a few visitors over the course of three years. This piece of information may reveal that the landlady has an ulterior motive besides earning money and receiving visitors. A final foreshadowing clue that convinces readers of what will happen to Billy Weaver is, “‘No thank you’, Billy said.
Ever had a mental “fork in the road?” Of course you have. We all have those tough decisions to make at times. William Stafford’s “Traveling Through the Dark” is about one of those very instances. But there’s more to it than meets the eye.
Phoebe and Sal go on an amazing adventure to find their mothers. Sal and Phoebe are the main characters in this novel. Phoebe's story, the subplot and Sals story, the main plot, both relate to each other in many ways. Sal starts a great story about a girl named Phoebe, but what she does not know is that is very similar to her own story.
During his journey of sin, Young Goodman Brown and the devil come upon Goody Cloyse, Young Goodman Brown's catechism teacher, and, still believing that she is a “pious and exemplary dame” Goodman Brown tries to stay away from the woman by pleading with the devil “I shall take a cut through the woods… being a stranger to you, she might ask whom I was consorting with” (3). Because of Young Goodman Brown’s beliefs of her innocence, it is even more jolting to him when she “knows her old friend,” the devil, and speaks about stolen broomsticks, recipes including “the juice of smallage and cinquefoil and wolf’s-bane,” and even the same devilish meeting that Young Goodman Brown and his accomplice are to attend (3). With signs that all point to sin and witchcraft, Young Goodman Brown’s shock in saying “That old woman taught me my catechism” had “a world of meaning” as he cannot possibly believe that a woman known to be so holy and righteous in the community could be so evil within. As Goodman Brown moves past the shock of Goody Cloyse’s actions, he is exposed to the sins of the holiest members of their Puritan community, the minister and Deacon Gookin. While Goodman Brown shamefully “[conceals] himself within the verge of the forest… he recognized the voices of the minister and Deacon Gookin” who speak of the same evil “meeting” as Goody Cloyse and even remark that “several of the Indian powwows” will even be present (4,5).
Francis Scott Fitzgerald once stated, “The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart and all they can do is stare blankly.” Throughout his famous work, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald portrayed the American Dream. Contrary to the ideology of the “Roaring Twenties” society, he described the American Dream as a delusion. People of the era focused on materialism in order to boost their wealth and status and forgot the importance of their relationships. Several characters within the novel sought to gain a higher status in society.
They knew his name no more than they knew who this girl had been before she was water. When the Moon Was Ours is an exceptional story. It is the book that I expect from The Graces. A reader can't simply describe its premise, because in some way–everything is tied to the focal plot. But, I will try in vain to encapsulate how beautiful it is.
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.
Marilyn’s troubled past promoted her decision to pressure her daughter, which eventually led to her demise. For example, after Lydia said that she lost her mother’s cookbook, Marilyn thought, “It was a sign, Marilyn decided. For her, it was too late. But it wasn’t too late for Lydia. Marilyn would not be like her own mother shunting her daughter toward husband and house, a life spent safely behind a deadbolt.”
Clarissa and Peter Walsh are the main character of the story around which the whole novel revolves. Clarissa is a women whose world consists of parties, fine clothing and she used to stay tidy, clean and fashionable. All of these factor point toward only one outcome, which is marriage of Clarissa with Peter Walsh. But she sacrifices the tranquility of an upper class life and married Richard. The reason behind this was her acceptance towards privacy over passion.
“We read it for months, so many times that the book became tattered and sweat stained, it lost its spine, came unearthed, sections fell apart […] but we loved it dearly” (68). Reading created joy between the girls, strengthening their friendship and their will to escape the encompassing darkness of the neighbourhood. Each moment spent reading in the courtyard was one where they could be children, creating an inseparable bond. There was no worry of the past becoming present, in fact, the book drove them to desire a better future. Little Women provided a luminosity from the injustices they suffered, like Lila’s inability to continue her education.
In the drama-pact film, Moonrise Kingdom, director Wes Anderson emphasizes the coming-of-age through his quirky characters and comedic dialect. The film is formed into a dreamlike fable, creating a sense of order and symmetry, as symmetry is marveled throughout the film, not only with the use of mise-en-scene but with character depiction. Anderson defines the identities of the two stroppy, rebellious characters, Suzy Bishop and Sam, by fabricating adult-like humor and scenes dramatized by 12 year olds. Suzy and Sam’s insurgence is out of the norm for children; two pen pals walking away from their caretakers and falsifying a life of their own. Unlikely scenarios are captured through each frame, but within each catastrophic event in the midst is a moral;
