“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.…
It’s said that when feeling alone, one should turn to a group of people for support. However, the sad reality is that often, when surrounded by people we don’t share the same views with, we feel even more secluded. This theme is present in both “The Cherry Orchard” by Antonin Chekov and “St. Lucy’s School for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell. In the works, main characters Madame Ranevsky and wolf-girl Mirabella are forced to adapt to a change they don’t want to undergo. Madame Ranevsky, who lived her life on a cherry orchard, is being asked to sell her home and to move on to a new life, one more urban and less extravagant. Mirabella, the youngest of the wolf girls, is sent to a reformatory girl’s…
St. Lucy's Home for Girls is about pack of girls that were raised by wolves, who are forced to go to a camp by their parents to ultimately fit society's standards and become a human. The camp takes place in a forest and later shifts to the school. The narrator of the story is Claudette. She talks in first person and is telling everything that’s going on through her mind. The main conflict for the girls was trying to figure out a way to adapt to the human lifestyle. Another conflict was when everyone was trying to figure out how to do the Sausalito, but no one but Jeanette knew and it took a while for the rest of the girls to learn how to do it. At the end Claudette goes to see her family, and even though she knows that she doesn't really fit…
The girls, all except Mirabella had focused on keeping their mouths shut and eyes on their feet. Daydreaming about home, running away, their past how they missed it so. Knowing they would be rejected by both cultures (Lycanthropic and human) if they were to return to their homes. So they stayed, obedient to most orders given and depressed, holding back the desires to act as they naturally would their former werewolf selves. Claudette was paired with her sister Mirabella who got her in trouble earning her a private slideshow of women that haven’t adapted into the human world (Russell, pg.243).…
St. Lucy’s Home for girls Raised by Wolves, Karen Russell’s collection of fantastical short stories take all that is mundane and fractures it into a fantastical world with humor, dramatic tone, or cultural/religious undertones. Russell whirls a reader into her stories with her capability to encase a reader in the story with her repetition of one’s senses. Constantly brining in the senses of a reader brought in the smells of a surrounding from the protagonist or in this case the narrator. In St. Lucy’s Home for girls Raised by Wolves, our narrator, Claudette, speaks from the mind of a half human half wolf in transition. Of the pack’s reaction to the nuns, how Sister Josephine “tasted like sweat and freckles” (226) after Claudette bit her ankle, which she “smelled easy to kill” (226); how the mousy social worker was “nervous smelling” (226), eventually Claudette herself “smelled like a purebred girl, easy to kill” (242). When the sisters were reunited with the brothers they no longer smelt as of family they knew but of “pomade and cold, sterile sweat” (241). Russell creates such realistic imagery in a non-realistic world. Not just with scents but with a sense of touch sensory. How the girls went “knuckling along” (224) the floors when they first arrived; even when speaking, their ineptitude to force their tongues to “curl around our false new names” (229) creates such realistic imagery you sense your tongue running across your own teeth.…
Nell learns an incredible number of life skills from her primer. Nell was completely illiterate before she had this book. Then, after just a few months with it ¨she found she could often read the words more quickly than the book spoke them” to her (184). This shows how much this book had an affect…
Catherine is an attractive, energetic and cheerful seventeen year old girl. Having rarely left Brooklyn, she's incredibly naïve and feels she is ready to go to work. Catherine begins the play in all innocence; she is ready to accept people for what they appear to be as she sees no danger. She is dutiful and loving to her elders and only thinks of taking a job because the principle advises it which shows her immaturity and incapability to make decisions by herself.…
each short story, Madame Loisel character growth is not evident and does not grow out of her…
The tone of the novel is very serious but at the same time inspiring. Jeannette’s parents cannot provide the financial support to supply for their children and she accepts that. She sees all her problems in a different way and acts like she is very happy. You can see this tone in the novel when she gets burned while she was making hotdogs because soon after she was out of the hospital, she was making hotdogs again like if nothing had happened and everything was okay. As she grows up she becomes more independent and intelligent. She learns that she does not have to live the way her parents do. This is where her inspiration becomes noticeable as well. She gets a job, saves up…
Using this book as a guide, the nuns usher this pack of female werewolves through a series of stages to adapt them to human culture. While conformity to human customs is repulsive to her instincts, as time goes on Claudette begins to admire (or at least envy) her older sister Jeanette’s ability to adapt to human culture so quickly. This breeds resentment, as their pack assumes Jeanette feels superior to her sisters. In a hypocritical fashion, when Claudette does finally begin to adapt as Jeanette did, Claudette turns around and takes pity on her younger sister Mirabella, who is unable to adapt to the nun’s teachings. Her inability to conform to the nun’s teachings brings the pack to worry about, and subsequently despise Mirabella. As Claudette explains it, “The pack hated Jeanette, but we hated Mirabella more. We began to avoid her… It was scary to be ambushed by your sister. I’d bristle and growl, the way that I’d begun to snarl at my own reflection as if it were a stranger” (Russell 271). This thin line of duality Claudette walks is much like the one presented to those being forcefully educated in their ancestors’ religion to appease their parents. While a part of such a…
This literature was confusing however, conceptually understandable that even though this short story was written somewhere between the life-time of Ernest Hemingway. People can relate to it in someway and the style of how it is written is something it could be said to be artistic and educational that people can learn from. As this textbook was dedicated for the purpose of learning literature, it was appropriate for using this literature in the book; So that people could debate, discuss the very meaning of the contents and…
Cited: Carter, Angela. “The Company of Wolves”. The Bloody Chamber. New York: Penguin Books, 1993.…
The Chosen Wolf, Adonis, stood overlooking the city as the brisk wind struck him in the face. The snow was so freezing that it felt like there were needles puncturing him with every step. He could see his breath in the chilly air around him. This was very outlandish to him, as he had come from a different world. He was from the planet of Takondwa. On this planet, the sun’s rays felt like hot coals scorching his fur coat. As the wolf was thinking about this, he realized he was getting too caught up with thinking about his home planet.…
He recognizes that reading is non-discriminative. Everything contains words that can form ideas, sentences, opinions, and etc. It was a relief from understanding that words can be a source of pleasure and an escape from hatred. He determines that the love of literature had a purpose on his life, to try to save his life. He paints a picture of himself speaking to kids who remind him of the struggle to be Indian in the non-Indian environment. He points out the different peers of that class that strive for distinction or fade into the shadows that culture created for them.…
Write a close analysis of ‘Mrs Aesop’ exploring how Duffy conveys her ideas to the reader.…