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

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Isaac Fox: St. Lucy’s Essay Karen Russell’s short story St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves shows the trials and tribulations of wolf girls at a school in an attempt to assimilate to human culture. I believe that Claudette has not successfully adapted to her new environment. This is because of the overwhelming amount of mistakes compared to her successes. This is made very clear in the beginning of the girls’ time at St. Lucy’s where Claudette is rowdy and unkempt. Later on, Claudette says that her new clothes are disorienting, this shows how even the simple earlier stages of assimilation are difficult for her. Furthermore, when she was forced to play a game with the purebred girls she growled and snarled, this was because she was uncomfortable …show more content…

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. In a flash of white-hot light, my months at St. Lucy’s had vanished” (Russell 243). This is undeniable evidence that, although Claudette attended St. Lucy’s, the things she has learned have not been retained in her memory. Also, that she cannot take being the center of attention in a new, high stress situation around further advanced wolves. Another indisputable piece of evidence is when she returns home, and states, “We crunched through the fall leaves in silence, and every step made me sadder” (Russell 246). This shows how even though she has the opportunity to return home while she is still at St. Lucy’s it still makes her upset. Also, that she cannot take a situation of being back in the woods or around other non-assimilated wolves without having these feelings, showing that she still wants to be

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Claudette shows this when she was digging holes with her sisters (Russell, 227). Claudette complete wolf to almost human. During Claudette’s time at St. Lucy’s she becomes extremely happy to be in her

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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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(115-116). This sedate tone is a clear craft move by the author. She specifically makes Jeannie seem resigned and about to give up. Denials of small, everyday, opportunities like this can have a damaging impact on one’s mental health and can create an inferiority complex. For example, Jeanne starts blaming herself and her race for everything that happens to her.

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Claudette tried her best to adapt to the humans culture and all the feral children had spent months learning to assimilate into human culture. However, despite her perseverance through all these challenges, some of the wolf in them still remained. This would later cause Claudette to stand out in both societies due to the wolf characteristics that still remained (thus not fitting in with the human societies) and the human characteristics that she learned (thus not fitting in the the werewolf societies). Feral diction also appeared in the story when Claudette attempted to dance to sausalito with Kyle. When she stepped onto the dance floor, the panicked and the feral part of her returned; Russell writes, “I threw back my head, a howl clawing its way up my throat” (250).

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In Stage One the wolf pack first arrives at St. Lucy’s. Stage One tells the reader that the environment for the wolf-girls will be intriguing and exciting. They will

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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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Throughout the story, Claudette faces many struggles as she navigates through her new life at her new school. One of the things she struggles with

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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.

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This can be very disorienting to her, considering how she has been raised and how she is now all of a sudden not allowed to comfort someone the only way she knows how . Concluding the following Claudette has gained some accomplishments in rehabilitation learning how to not concave into her natural instincts and how she is starting to accept St. Lucy´s for what it is. Based on some of the struggles and accomplishments that Russle shows above, proves that Claudette has not successfully adapted to human

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Seward does not even consider her as someone he was engaged with, but a ‘thing’ that only images her ‘When Lucy—I call the thing that was before us Lucy because it bore her shape—.’ Her loss of innocence and purity is further expanded by the description of her features and expression. ‘Saw us she drew back with an angry snarl, such as a cat gives when taken unawares; then her eyes ranged over us. Lucy’s eyes in form and color; but Lucy’s eyes unclean and full of hell-fire, instead of the pure, gentle orbs we knew.’ The application of ‘cat’ as simile portrays she has lost her humanity and presents the utilization of cats in the Victorian era which was to hunt vermin and mice (in a sense humans are technically vermins, if you know what I mean and I think you do), whilst the description of her eyes being ‘unclean’ and ‘full of hell-fire’ expressess how evil has consumed her (hell being a biblical symbol).

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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

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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).

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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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