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).
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.
By the end of the story Claudette fully adapted to the new culture. In stage 1, Claudette and her sisters have arrived to “St Lucy’s Home.” At first, our pack was all hair and snarls and floor-thumping joy” (pg 237). the girl’s barley knew about how to act like actual humans.
They feel many mixed emotions and struggle to keep themselves composed during this time. At the beginning of Stage 2, Claudette struggles to conform to the new form of locomotion. Claudette repeats over and over again, “Mouth shut, shoes on feet,” and was “...stumbl[ing] around in a daze, my mouth black with shoe polish” (229). Claudette works very hard to adapt but struggles as she becomes very distraught. Claudette felt “irritated, bewildered, depressed…” and overall felt very “uncomfortable…”
In stages, 1, 2, and 3 Claudette is going through stages to become more civilized. On Claudettes journey to conforming to human, she has faced many struggles in becoming human. To start, Claudette “...was irritated, bewildered, depressed”, her pack is “uncomfortable, and between languages.” She is struggling in becoming human because she is stuck between two barriers.
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.
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.
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).
She is not comfortable in the human culture if she resorts to her natural tendencies. While she is preparing to dance, she, “rubbed a pumpkin muffin all over [her] body earlier that morning,” (Russell 242) to mask her scent. This action not only creates humor but also shows that Claudette is not ready to go back and forth from human culture and wolf culture. Normal humans would use perfume to mask a smell, Claudette chose to use a pumpkin muffin because she knew it would mask her odor. This is not a human action, therefore, she does not meet the expectation of Stage
“I told him I that I would never lose trust in him, and I promised myself I never would”(76). At this point in the story, Jeannette is the only one who seems to still believe in her father. She looks up to him with a child’s eyes and always wants to be there for him. After failing her everyday, having faith in her father begins to be a struggle for Jeanette, and her tone changes. “If Francie saw the good in her father, maybe I was not a complete fool for believing in mine, or trying to believe in him.
and she acts like a good student it is only because of the school’s expectations. Claudette wants to return back to her wolf culture so she pretends to have
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.
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
While reading the story, you can tell in the narrators’ tone that she feels rejected and excluded. She is not happy and I’m sure, just like her family, she wonders “why her?” She is rejected and never accepted for who she really is. She is different. She’s not like anyone else
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
