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St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves Summary

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Do you ever think about your parent’s sacrifices to give you a better future and how these actions will affect your life? In Karen Russell’s short story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, the author presents the story of a group of girls raised by wolves that are introduced to a new culture, an environment with new social norms that will help them to correct behaviors, interact, and adapt to society.
Moreover, the theme of this short story is the social norms, stereotyping, and cultural and group identity, that a person may challenge when is a member of a different society and an unfamiliar culture. Besides, Mrs. Russell, emphasizes the theme of the story through the whole story, by revealing vivid descriptions of the girls’ behavior, appearance, isolation, and a self of belonging. Additionally, the main character describes their family, lifestyle, social behavior and the reason for their parent's decision through her narration: …show more content…

They lived an outsider's existence in caves at the edge of the forest, threatened by frost and pitchforks. They had been ostracized by the local farmers for eating their skilled fruit pies and terrorizing the heifers. They had ostracized the local wolves by having sometimes-thumbs, and regrets, and human children. (Their condition skips a generation.) Our pack grew up in a green purgatory. We couldn't keep up with the purebred wolves, but we never stopped crawling. We spoke a slab-tongued pidgin in the cave, inflected with frequent howls. Our parents wanted something better for us; they wanted us to get braces, use towels, be fully bilingual. (Russell,

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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.

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Karen Russell’s short story, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, is about a pack of wolf-like girls who go to St. Lucy’s to learn how to adapt to a human life. The stages of adapting shows the character 's development and their traits throughout the story. There are many struggles as they adapt to human life, and epigraphs from The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock informs the nuns on what will occur at a certain point in time. Sometimes the epigraphs aren’t entirely accurate. However, Stage Two’s epigraph is quite accurate with its description to Claudette.

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In the short story, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, by Karen Russell the character Claudette struggles to follow the expectations from the Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock but she uses tancity to overcome her mistakes. Claudette is a confused girl trying to determine her purpose in life as she is taken from her home with her sisters and is forced to become civilized. Pressure from the nuns and her sisters causes Claudette to meet her goal, however, that same pressure also causes her to fail some the expectations from the handbook. As Claudette moves through each stage Russell provides the reader clues to understanding that Claudette is the type of person that seems normal and fine on the outside, but on the inside is struggling to understand who they really are.

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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).

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St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, short story is about the difficulty growing up in a foreign world known to a group of girls. Claudette, the protagonist, explains the crucial life it is expecting to adapt and fully integrate into human society. Throughout the story, she illustrates the lessons needed to incorporate the new adjusts but still have her lycan culture remain in her. She is between the new cultures and her contradicting self to fully integrate. By the end of the story there is confusion towards her complete integration in human society whether or not Claudette is integrated in human society.

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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.

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In “St. Lucy 's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” by Karen Russell, a group of girls are brought in to learn how to act like humans. These girls were raised to live just like wolves do. At the home, they are taught how to act more civilized and like humans. Some of the girls adjust better than the others. One of the oldest girls, Jeanette, does very well from the beginning, but another, Mirabella, does very badly.

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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.

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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.

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Karen Russel’s narrator, Claudette in the short story “St. Lucy’s home for girls raised by wolves” has a guilty hope that she fails to adapt to her new human culture and exhibits her instinctive wolve traits showing that Claudette has not successfully adapted to the human culture. Claudette wishes to adapt to the human culture but has a difficult time accepting it. The St. Lucy’s home for girls raised by wolves is for girls to learn the human culture. The faster the girls go through the stages, the faster they have adapted and accepted their new culture and can be released. While Claudette acts as if the human culture is growing on her

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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.

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Her personal experience is socially and theoretically constructed and emotions play an essential role in the process of identity formation. Her identity is not fixed, which is portrayed by inquisitiveness that her own mother and Aunt thought she was possessed, enhanced and made this story an enriching experience. The family is the first agent of socialization, as the story illustrates, even the most basic of human activities are learned and through socialization people

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