St. Kucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves Analysis

In Karen Russell 's short story, “St. Lucy 's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, she takes the character Claudette on a journey from a barbaric, careless wolf to a independent, determined girl. Claudette is the narrator of this short story. She and her pack start off in the woods, where they lived all their lives, the nuns in the home use the handbook to take them from the woods and teach them to be civilized humans. Claudette goes through this journey, trying her best, for if she cannot become human, she will have nowhere to go. The nuns split the girls learning process into 5 stages, each one filled with new things. The handbook shows the expectations of the girls and what should be in store for them. Russell uses this handbook to develop Claudette 's character throughout the story. Claudette changes throughout each stage, learning and shaping her new identity in each one.

In stage one, Claudette isn 't yet independent. She is still apart of the pack and individuals aren 't established until the end of the stage. According to the handbook, it 's is “fun for [the]

The handbook expects the girls to begin to understand the human culture almost perfectly and acquire a newfound self confidence (240). Stage 4 is where all the puzzle pieces begin to come together. However Claudette still has her wolf self inside her. She is determined and trying her best, yet it isn 't coming together like she wanted. A debutante ball came to test the girls and what they had learned. Claudette was called to do the Sausalito, while she drew a blank, “what we 're the steps?” (243) she frantically asked herself, forgetting all she had learned. This could ruin Claudette 's chance at success in her treatment. “In a flash of white-hot light, my months at St. Lucy 's had vanished, and I was just a terrified animal again” (243) Claudette had worked so hard, but lost her self confidence. Despite Claudette not failing, she did not meet the expectations of the