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What is a central idea in St Lucy's home for girls raised by wolves
St lucy's home for girls raised by wolves characters
What is a central idea in St Lucy's home for girls raised by wolves
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In the story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell, the characters, Claudette, Jeanette and Mirabella are humans living with a wolf family. The girls were sent to St. Lucy’s to learn human behaviors. “The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock” is used to show how the girls will react to their development. Claudette, by the end of the story, has fully adapted to human society. In stage 1, Claudette was exploring her new, exciting environment. The girls tore through stage 3 girls’ clothes and shattered light bulbs. “The deacon handed out some stale cupcakes” ( Russell, 237), which shows the girls eat human food. Claudette realized she needed to change when she saw Mirabella get tranquilized for not listening. …show more content…
She was now reading at a 5th grade level and followed the nuns instructions. Claudette would remind herself “mouth shut, shoes on feet” ( Russell, 240). This also shows she’s trying to change for her parents sake and to be better than Jeanette. Stage 3, Claudette separates herself from Mirabella so that she doesn’t get held back. She also struggles to remember her mother, “struggling to conjure up a picture” ( Russell, 247). She begun to have human habits like “taking dainty bites of peas and borscht” ( Russell, 244). Claudette also learned how to ride a bike and it made her enjoy biking when the nuns said “being human is like riding a bicycle” ( Russell, 246). “Mirabella would run after the bicycles, growling old names. We pedaled faster.” ( Russell, 246), this shows the Claudette wants to become human. Stage 4 was when the girls had their first dance and their first interaction with the brothers since being wolf. Claudette being worried about the sausalito shows she wants to make a good impression on the nuns and the brothers. When Claudette became nervous and messed up, “Mirabella had intercepted my eye-cry for help. She chewed through her restraints and tackled me from behind.” ( Russell, 250). Claudette acted mad at Mirabella so the nuns would approve. In this stage, like said in the epigraph, Claudette’s confidence
To begin, it is clear that Claudette is facing some struggles as she transitions from her lycanthropic culture to humanity. First of all, Claudette finds it hard to “be civilized and ladylike, couth and kempt” as she says, “We tore through the austere rooms, overturning dresser drawers, pawing through the neat piles of the Stage 3 girls’ starched underwear, smashing lightbulbs with our bare fists.” This shows that Claudette is having a hard time acting like humans when she has been raised like a wolf
When Marie tries to ask the protagonist to take a walk, this action shows that she is trying to achieve Pauline’s dream by getting her outside of the house. Therefore, she could finally feel the true meaning of freedom. Nevertheless, Pauline’s mother’s response demonstrates that she wants her daughter’s safety more than anything. The mother tries to keep Pauline away from the danger, so the protagonist can at last have a healthier life. However, Agathe’s reply shows that her mother is willing to sacrifice Pauline’s dream to keep her secure. Therefore, the author uses contrasting characters to mention that safety is more valuable. Furthermore, the protagonist starts to describe Tante Marie and reveals that she always has her hair “around her shoulder” (85). When Pauline describes Marie, Pauline shows how her Tante is open-minded. In fact, Marie helps Pauline to let go of her limitations and to get a taste of her dream. Therefore, Marie always wants Pauline to go outside and play hockey or even to take a walk. These actions that Pauline’s Tante takes show how she is determinate to make Pauline’s dream come true. Thus, the author
Whether one would like to admit it or not, change is a difficult and not to mention uncomfortable experience which we all must endure at one point in our lives. A concept that everyone must understand is that change does not occur immediately, for it happens overtime. It is necessary for time to pass in order for a change to occur, be it days, weeks, months, or even years. The main character, who is also the narrator of “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, realizing that “things felt less foreign in the dark” (Russell 225), knows that she will be subject to change very soon. The author makes it evident to readers that the narrator is in a brand new environment as the story begins. This strange short story about girls raised by wolves being trained by nuns to be more human in character is a symbol for immigration, as the girls are forced to make major changes in their lives in order to fit in with their new environment and adapt to a new culture.
In addition, on page 235 Claudette says, “Lick your own wounds,” I said, not unkindly. It was what the nuns had instructed us to say; wound licking was not something you did in polite company.” In this example, Mirabella, a sister in the house that is shunned, gets cut and no one will lick her wounds because the girls are supposed to be acting in a manner that portrays to human society. Claudette would have licked Mirabella’s wounds, but the nuns told her not to and she's supposed to be adapting to human society. Finally, on page 234 Claudette says, “When she tried to steal the bread out of my hands, I whirled around and snarled at her, pushing my ears back from my head. I bit her shoulder, once, twice, the only language she would respond to.” In this example, there is a conflict between Claudette and Mirabella. Mirabella tries to steal bread out of Claudette’s hands. The only way that Claudette can get Mirabella to stop and calm down is to act upon the way that Mirabella knows best which is the wolf ways. Claudette then bites Mirabella’s shoulder which is another struggle that Claudette faces.
244). Claudette adjusts to change in Stage 3 when she “took dainty bites of peas and borscht” proving her sophistication improvement (pg. 244). She began to lose her wolf identity when she was “struggling to conjure up a picture” of her mother because she was moving on (pg. 247). Claudette does not completely adjust in this stage because she was “nervous to meet new humans” (pg. 245). She was also unprepared to “dance with the brothers” proving her uncertainty in her skills. Claudette’s behavior matched the epigraph because she wondered how the purebred girls could live in captivity. She also felt that her wolf culture’s life style was superior when she says that the purebred girls were “always homesick for a dimly sensed forest” assuming that they actually missed being in a forest they never actually lived in or missed (pg.
In the short story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” Karen Russell discusses how wolf girls develop and how nuns guided them. The girls are wolf like and their parents are wolves, their parents sent them for a better opportunity to have a better life. The nuns use The Jesuit Handbook On Lycanthropic Culture Shock to help develop the girls. The book helped them teach the girls and guide them throughout the stages the stages are the different ways that help the nuns when they use the handbook. Karen Russell explains how the girls developed in the stages. Russell specifically talks about how the narrator, Claudette has developed, which leads into being accepted into the human culture. After arriving at “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”,
The Carmelites were forced no longer wear their habits, but plain clothes instead. Similarly, the Carmelites dressed the statue of the Infant Jesus with plain clothes in hopes to disguise it when they ship it to the Dauphin. Afraid of martyrdom, Blanche flees the convent and returns to her father’s house; she ran right into the heart of her fear. Her father is killed by revolutionaries, and as she stands over his dead body, a revolutionary spots her. He soon realizes that she is a nun, and forces her to receive “communion”, but instead of receiving the Blood of Christ, she is forced to drink to blood of the people slain by the revolutionaries. According to Villeroi, “Blanche at that moment, embodied her martyred country…” She was taken by the “September Mothers”, thus falling right into the hands of her foes. Likewise, the Revolutionaries intercepted the package containing the Infant King, and it too, fell right into the hands of the foes. The Carmelites expected this to happen, as their motivation of sending the package was to get the Dauphin martyred, as they themselves wanted to be martyred. This hope for martyrdom was what led Blanche to flee the convent. The Carmelites are now being brought to the scaffold, and Blanche is present there against the crowd. After the last nun is martyred, Blanche, still in the crowd, carries on their song. The
Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.” The story is about a group of girls that are raised by a family of wolves. They have lived in caves all their lives and do not know how to behave and interact like humans. They had no authority in the cave and were treated as a pack. There was no compromising or respect because everyone was treated equally. With this being said they are sent away to St. Lucy’s church, and the girls are taught how to adapt to a new environment. The girls are unsure how to act in the new environment, “It was impossible to make the blank, chilly bedroom feels like home. In the beginning we drank gallons of bathwater as part of a collaborative effort to mark our territory… we couldn’t mark our scent here it made us feel invisible” (Russell 270). The transformation is tough as they learn to become more “civilized” in society and abandon their old habits and family values. The setting helps to display how different the girls acted before they got moved to the church. The cave was their home and that’s all they knew. They were unaware of the outside world and who they truly
The Mirabal sisters are no wilting flowers. The female protagonists in The Time of the Butterflies fought for their rights against a corrupted government using their full blown feminist powers. The citizens know them as “the butterflies” and see them as leaders. The beautiful sisters did what few men had been willing to do. Patria, the eldest, kept herself engaged in her children and religious activities while Dede, the second eldest, focused on pleasing her mother and being a reliable partner and sister. The third sister is Minerva, who is the firecracker in the family. She doesn't fear speaking to a crowd and giving her opinion. Maria Teresa in the youngest. She looks up to her sisters and isn’t loves to charm boys with her looks and spirit.
There is a certain order to the way things are done, and when that balance is interrupted or offset, things start to go awry. One of the main disturbances is the lack of paternal responsibility and leadership in their town. The first out of order-ness begins with the swap in gender roles. When the men run from the devil, one of their wives, Christine, intervenes and makes the deal herself; taking over the supposed paternal role. During this point in time women were seen as the lesser gender whose place was in the house preparing meals for her family and staying out of affairs they had no business in. It was the duty of the men to make sure it stayed this way. When Christine intervened in their problems and made the deal with the devil, everything slowly began to unravel.
One incident, for example, is when Claudia, Frieda, Pecola, and Maureen Peal, a well-loved “beauty” of Lorain, are walking home from school. As the girls saunter down the street, they begin to bicker. The conversation ends with Maureen stomping away and establishing the fact that she is indeed “cute”. Claudia then thinks to herself, “If she was cute--and if anything could be believed, she was--then we were not. And what did that mean? We were lesser. Nicer, brighter, but still lesser. Dolls we could destroy, but we could not destroy the honey voices of parents and aunts, the obedience in the eyes of our peers, the slippery light in the eyes of our teachers when they encouraged the Maureen Peals of the world. What was the secret? What did we lack? Why was it important? And so what?. . . And all the time we knew that Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred.
Jeannette spends several days in the quiet hospital where she experiences sleeping in a clean bed and receiving three meals a day. The staff is concerned about her home environment, even though Jeannette is happy with her parents' laissez-faire parenting style. When her parents and her siblings, Brian and older sister Lori,
Towards the middle of the memoir, the theme is shown through the irony of Jeannette’s mother’s situation as well as Jeannette’s feelings towards
The story follows three girls- Jeanette, the oldest in the pack, Claudette, the narrator and middle child, and the youngest, Mirabella- as they go through the various stages of becoming civilized people. Each girl is an example of the different reactions to being placed in an unfamiliar environment and retrained. Jeanette adapts quickly, becoming the first in the pack to assimilate to the new way of life. She accepts her education and rejects her previous life with few relapses. Claudette understands the education being presented to her but resists adapting fully, her hatred turning into apathy as she quietly accepts her fate. Mirabella either does not comprehend her education, or fully ignores it, as she continually breaks the rules and boundaries set around her, eventually resulting in her removal from the school.
Jeanne decided, that she would go along with society for once, if they wanted her to be the problem child who didn’t go along with everything they said, she wouldn’t be. Jeanne decided that she shouldn’t have to listen to the same words every day “Why can’t you be a normal child?”, “Why do say such horrible things?”, “Why don't you follow along like everyone else?”, and “Why do you keep bullying your classmates?”. Jeanne had enough of the lectures, of the accusations, and she had especially had enough of everyone telling her she wasn’t