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

“St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell is a short story about a “pack” of girls raised by werewolves that are severely lycanthropic. Their parents send them to a home called St. Lucy’s run by Jesuit nuns that’s goal is to eradicate all traces of wolf culture and behavior from the girls, and assimilate them into human culture. To help them, the nuns have a handbook called “The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock”. The handbook divides each part of the “packs” development into human culture into 5 stages. The main character, Claudette, develops a lot throughout each of the 5 stages, but still has some struggles. By the end of the story, Claudette is very close to fully adapting, but still has some wolf like tendencies.
The first example is when “we jumped from bunk to bunk, spraying” pg. 237 which shows she has not adapted at all, because humans obviously do not run around peeing. Another example is: “We girls ran along the shore, tearing at our jumpers in plaid agitation.” This is another example of not adapting as they are not comfortable in human clothing. The last example of how she was not adapted is on page 238: “Our noses ached under an invisible assault. Everything was smudged with a distinct human odor”. She does not really show much signs of adapting to human culture in Stage 1 because she has just joined St. Lucy’s and really has not been there for a long enough time for progress to be