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

St. Lucy’s home is a home for girls to go to when they have been raised by wolves. They go there to gain skills and manners that they weren’t taught growing up. During their visit, they go through five stages to become more human. Some girls change and improve, but others do not and they stay the same. Something happens with Mirabella and she did not improve during her visit.

Karen Russell’s St Lucy’s Home for Girl Raised by Wolves is about a pack of wolf girls that are taught how to act civilized at St Lucy’s. Over the course of the story, there are three main wolf girls, Claudette, Jeanette, and Mirabella. At St Lucy’s the girls go through five stages. Some of the girls will either be ahead, stay at the same pace as, or be behind the program. The epigraph for Stage One suggests that the girls will have a new-found curiosity and excitement. It also suggests that they will enjoy the new environment that they’re placed in.

The epigraphs in St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves are intended to give information as to what development the wolf-girls of the school will experience. The information they give us typically concerns the actions the girls may perform and the feelings they might experience by telling us the stage that they are at in their transition. With the exception of Mirabella, all the information we're given concerning the girls matches up with the quotes's corresponding epigraph. Epigraph two and it's sequential text is no different.

Secondly, the author uses word choice to show the speakers overall sorrow. Throughout the whole poem there are word scattered everywhere that describe the general emotion of sorrow, some of those word being “restless” (19), “torment”, and “troubled” (4). These words instantly give the connotation of feelings like despair and sadness. The speaker also uses literary elements such as simile to express sorrow, like when she says “These troubles of the heart/ are like unwashed clothes” (27, 28). Everyday people usually do not pay much mind to unwashed clothes, and usually look at it as something unimportant or irrelevant. When the speaker compares her internal troubles to something that holds little importance to everyday life and is also seen as unpleasant, the readers really get a look into the sorrow and sadness that the speaker is truly feeling. The speaker also uses word choice to help show the readers the true intensity of what she is going through.

After the wolf leaves his home, the narrator calls his mother and tells her that a wolf just came to see him, and she tells him that “‘there’s one at mine too. I’m just now looking at him’” (Poissant 3). With this moment we realize that the lack of appreciation for the world around us is not just an individual issue, but a collective issue with the society we live in. The narrator wasn’t the first person to take a moment for granted, and will not be the last, as we as a privileged species do not recognize that we are fortunate to have things as simple as food on our tables and clothes on our bodies. The wolf in this story is acting as the world telling us that we cannot take anything for granted, or else it will be gone before we know it. This mindset will arguably be the demise of our species, as soon enough we will all be seeing wolves that will be take away our belongings. Only then will we come to appreciate everything we have in our lives.

Upon first reading “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” it might seem like an imaginative fantasy and nothing else. The story focuses on the daughters of a pack of werewolves, and it takes place in a world where the werewolves and their daughters are nothing out of the ordinary. But upon closer examination, this is a story rooted in reality. This inventive tale parallels several real world phenomena. Karen Russell uses allegory in “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” to objectify western society’s views of people outside of that society and of outsiders in general, and compare them to the views that people have of wild animals.

The second epigraph of St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised By Wolves refers to a “Stage 2” from the Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock. According to the text, in this stage, the wolf-girl pack will realize that they are required to make an effort to adapt to their new environment and begin the stressful process of integrating themselves into the host culture. During this period, the epigraph explains, students may feel frustrated, depressed, confused, out-of place, or somewhat insecure, reminiscing about their old home and ways of life. Stage 2 marks an important phase in the development of the pack as a character, and of the wolf-girls as individuals.

The three exiles from the Exeter book peoms are similar to eachother in many ways. All three people find themselves in a life of solitude, and lonliness. They each dream of the way their lives used to be in comparison to what their life has become. Each perrson also shares a strong resolve to survive, if it is their fate to do so. The differences among the three people are apparent by the way in which they became exiled from their land and families, and the amount of pain they feel from their deployment. Each person uses a different coping technique in order to continue on their newfound path.

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

By constantly moving around, Jeanette’s childhood was characterized by its instability and her own dependence on herself in order to survive the negligence of her parents. The glass castle symbolized a place where the Walls’ family would finally settle and become free of governmental intervention, however, it was through Jeanette’s realization that individualism was the underlying issue to her family’s problems, that she became aware of the impracticalness of being self-reliant. While Jeanette did have faith in her parents, her father’s continual inability to support his family and her mother’s own carelessness for her children, eroded all of Jeanette’s confidence. Jeanette’s decision to move to New York was not fueled by a need for individualism, however, it was in fact her desire to return to society and reintegrate into a world where she would be able to interact with other people. Thus, Jeanette's return to society signified her dependence of others and shows how individualism can never solve all of people's

I believe Russell’s development of complex effects in his epigraph of Stage 2 represents the wolf girls’ in a state of mental confusion, facing irritation and distress, and presenting uncertainty. The epigraph creates discombobulation, aggravation, and obscuration that has a significant impact on the wolf girls’ assimilation to the new

Different readers could interpret Russell Baker’s Growing Up in many ways. The book gives insight into his life, from his humble childhood to his successful adulthood. By describing the events in his life, he is also paying tribute to the important women who shaped him. These women were his Mother, Grandmother, and wife. All three were vital influences on him, and made him who he is in the present day. My interpretation focuses on those women more than any other factor in Russell’s life, most importantly, his mother Lucy Elizabeth.

The start of Lucy’s journey of introspection begins when Lucy arrives in Italy and is the stereotypical English tourist. The conventional English tourist does not care to learn about the foreign people, but he or she is infatuated with the country’s past history and art. The art and history of a country are alluring and disassociate from the stark reality that the people of the country represent. Forster resents the stereotypical English tourist from an early age when travelling with his mother to Italy. Forster conveys his distaste in A Room with a View in two methods. First, he translates “the lack of view [of Lucy and Charlotte’s initial room] as symptomatic of the [English] cultural narrow mindedness” (Sampaio 900). Both Lucy and Charlotte are arrogant when

So when "the sad little eyes" ask, "What has been happening to me?" (440), it is equivalent to a sad-eyed Miss Brill asking herself that same question. Mansfield stresses the importance of evaluating the ''ermine toque'' (441) as a symbol by making her the only other character besides Miss Brill who is wearing a fur. However, this is not the only character fact the two women share.

This weariness with life is a symbol of schizoid suicide, which leads into withdrawal into death, into a ghostly world. In the unconscious, the narrator believes that the corruption of relationships through sexual contact brings nothingness. This again indicates the presence of a schizoid element in his mind. A person with a schizoid mind seeks isolation. Union with a woman will not take him into the path of separateness, so he buries the woman. Now he can be free. He is alone but alive. In the process, he is denouncing the "inferior" half of himself, the woman in him, the part that he fears may corrupt and make him diseased. He expresses the intolerable perplexity of woman as a focus of appearance and reality.