ipl-logo

St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolf Sparknotes

391 Words2 Pages

How may one feel if everything known strips away from them? In St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, a short story by Karen Russell, the wolf pack goes to St. Lucy’s Home to become more civilized. As the journey continues, Claudette learns how to successfully leave her origins and adapt to human life.
In the early stages of the story, Claudette faces many challenges whether it involves identity, family, or overstimulation. Accordingly, in stage 1 Claudette is seperated from her brothers and parents. She is then sent to a home for girls raised by wolves. While living at the home, Claudette faces new challenges and concepts. For example, in stage two, Claudette has a hard time accepting her new life. In the text, Claudette states that the pack “[has] never wanted to run away so badly in [their] lives” (Russell 230). Claudette does not enjoy the conditions within St. Lucy's Home. As well as, in stage three, Claudette does not want to make any mistakes, however, she says that, “[t]here were so many things that we could do wrong” (Russell 238). One can see that she feels the need for approval. …show more content…

To demonstrate, when Mirabella jumps onto Claudette she needs to decide on what should happen next. Claudette states that “everyone was watching; everyone wanted to see what I could do” (Russell 245). Claudette now must make a choice, in this case, she became very bewildered and lashed out on Mirabella. Although, one may consider this as an eradicate outcome, it helped Claudette in the end. In stage five Claudette graduates from St. Lucy’s Home and then she returns “home”. It states in the text, “So,’ I said, telling my first human lie. ‘I’m home’” (Russell 247). Claudette refers to herself as human, and after returning to her previous home she realizes the differences between her and her parents. One can see how each epigraph shows Claudette improving whether it be a challenge or not, each time improvements are

Show More
Related
522 Words | 3 Pages

she wanted to run away so bad, her and her sisters would stay up all night. On page 246 in paragraph 3 Claudette shows her sadness by saying “we had never wanted to run away so badly; but who did we have to run back to?” She would stay up all night trying to learn how to be human. She practice how to dance when she found out about the dance and meeting the brothers.

Read More
531 Words | 3 Pages

Through all the stages of Lycanthropic Culture shock in “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by wolves” by Karen Russell, the girls will be making a cultural change. The pack will have to adjust to the “human culture. ” While they are assimilating into this culture, they are going to have to make progress quickly, adapt, and over all, enjoy their new culture. The girls must progress quickly because the monks are expecting them to hook on quickly.

Read More
461 Words | 2 Pages

In the story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell, the girls go through a lot of changes. In the story the girls are experience changes, because everything is new to them, and they are wanting to explore the new place. Another change they are experiencing is, they are rejecting their host culture. The final change the girls are experiencing is that they are finding they are adapting to the new culture, so they become fully bilingual.

Read More
1164 Words | 5 Pages

Claudette take dainty bites of peas. It shows that she’s changed out of the wolf culture and is starting to get use to the human culture and starting to eat human food. “If we were back home, and Mirabella had come under attack: I would have warned her. But the truth is that by stage 3 I wanted her gone.” This change means something.

Read More
532 Words | 3 Pages

For starters, “I narrowed my eyes at Kyle and flattened my ears, something I hadn’t done for months. Kyle looked panicked” (Russell 243). This example shows that Claudette cannot help but to be aggressive toward others when she is panicked. Furthermore, she does not understand how to interact with others, proving that her time at St. Lucy’s has failed to eradicate her lycanthropic tendencies. Another jarring example is when Claudette explains that, “All of a sudden the only thing my body could remember how to do was pump and pump.

Read More
922 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
1115 Words | 5 Pages

In addition to these, Claudette struggles to grasp the intricacies of human culture, but is making connections to her own. At the church, “[the girls] sang at the chapel annexed to the home every morning. [They] understood that this was the humans’ moon, the place for howling beyond purpose. Not for mating, not for hunting, not for fighting, not for anything but the sound itself.

Read More
758 Words | 4 Pages

They think they can bend the rules and do what they think is necessary. Jeannette is exposed to these understandings, making her the person she grew up to be. Jeanette demonstrates how she struggles with her family throughout numerous portions of the novel: “The Desert,” “Welch,” New York.” These struggles developed and defined who she came to be.

Read More
814 Words | 4 Pages

Following this, another example of her struggles is her having a diorenting change that is shown in the following quote, “It impossible to make the blank, chilly bedroom feel like home.¨(Russell.230) Considering this quote, Russell uses it to show that Claudette does not feel at home. Cludette feels lonely and blank within this desolate room compared to how she felt in her initial habitat. This is a struggle she faces within the beginning of not feeling at home. Drawing this together, Claudette is struggling to adapt to her new environment and the new language and receive an extensive culture shock.

Read More
1429 Words | 6 Pages

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

Read More
1455 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More
1580 Words | 7 Pages

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).

Read More
504 Words | 3 Pages

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

Read More
785 Words | 4 Pages

(227). Mathilde's dishonest behavior represents her fear of appearing ordinary in front of society, when in fact, taking Madame Forestier’s necklace to appear affluent is an act. Her actions, conversations, and thoughts let readers understand Mathilde's distinct

Read More
707 Words | 3 Pages

Change is a part of life that can be beneficial, harmful, or both. Every day people dream of becoming something they are not with hopes they can achieve what they believe to be a better life. In “The Ruined Maid” by Thomas Hardy and “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell, both narrators undergo a drastic transition in their lifestyles. In Hardy’s poem the narrator, Melia, goes from living a simple farm life, to living a luxurious life as a prostitute. In Russell’s short story the narrator, Claudette, transitions from life as a wolf-girl to becoming an average human girl.

Read More

More about St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolf Sparknotes

Related Topics

Open Document