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.

Throughout the story however, It becomes apparent the narrator isn 't just one of those weird ' 'dog people ' ' (like myself). The humanized wolf is seen by some of the other people in the story exactly like she does. In the second paragraph of the story she mentions this, an old man named Grady - who lives next to a community garden and Bessie, a homeless woman who lives out of a shopping cart are also acquainted with the wolf. It seems to me that the narrator isn 't trying to teach us good morals for animal equality with the tale. She is trying to get another point across with the constant presence of the being throughout the story, and the highlighting of the certain

When Claudette and her pack arrive at St. Lucy 's they are savage and animalistic. Claudette even mentions in her narration that upon arrival they were, “...all hair and snarl and floor thumping joy” (Russell 237). In the beginning the pack fights all prompts for human behavior, from shedding their new clothes to growling at any intervening human. They all are of a single mindset at the start: maintain their independence and continue to behave as they were raised to. The pack eats, sleeps, and dreams with total unity. Independence is foreign and unheard of for this group of she-wolfs. Claudette even narrates the beginning of the story almost exclusively with “we”, rather than “I”, demonstrating that the pack even thought as a whole. Many of the pack behaviors

In terms of Claudette’s development as a character, this is only partly true. She still has wolf tendencies, that aren’t as apparent but can be triggered, but she is still able to act much like a normal human. “I was only worried about myself. By that stage, I was no longer certain about how the pack felt about anything” (Russell 248). Claudette shows how she does not really identify as a part of that pack and instead is worried about her own advancement towards becoming human.

Culture shock: a sense of confusion and uncertainty sometimes with feelings of anxiety that may affect people exposed to an alien culture or environment without adequate preparation. In “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell and “The Management of Grief” by Bharati and Mukherjee, you see two unique examples of people coming into an unknown world to them and trying to figure it out. In Russell’s short story she tells us a story of a girl raised by wolves who is introduced to the human world along with her family. Mukherjee’s story tells us a story of a traditional Indian woman, who just lost her family to a tragic plane accident, and tries to find her new identity. Although Russell’s story is a fantasy unlike Mukhejee’s,

" (p.244). Even though she has improved, Claudette still has not adapted to human society, she wanted to run away, because she has home sickness "We had never wanted to run away so badly in our lives; but who did we have to run to?" (p.240), Claudette also seems to fight with Mirabella in this stage "I used my new motor skills. I threw dirt, I threw stones. 'Get away!'

When Claudette was brought to this new environment, she faced a major culture shock. She said she remembers “how disorienting it was to look down and see two square-toed shoes” instead of her “own four feet”. Initially, Claudette was so used to acting like a wolf on “four feet” that when she got to this new culture, she did not know how to feel or fit in. It is like teaching a baby to walk because she has never walked with two feet. Not only did she struggle to fit in, but she was “stuck between two languages” and was “irritated, bewildered, and depressed”.

Jeanette is taking everything in and absorbing it. She is the successor of the group and isn't as homesick as most girls, which isn't mentioned in the epigraph. The pack “hated Jeanette. She was the most successful of [them], the one furthest removed from her origins.” (232) She was detaching from her wolf self fast and becoming individualized like mentioned in the epigraph. Finally, we have Claudette. Claudette is the middle ground of Jeanette and Mirabella. “[She] was one of the good girls. Not great and not terrible, solidly middle of the pack.” (233) Claudette is taking everything in as fast as the others, she is trying her best to drift away from her old ways since she realizes that becoming humanely will be harder than she estimated like mentioned before. The epigraph did well explaining the struggle these girls are going through to adjust and

1. The wolf is a pack animal. What does it mean to be a pack animal?

The wolves' habit of hunting in packs has resulted in the development of complex patterns of social behavior. Wolves are gregarious: they not only hunt in packs or groups but live most of their lives with other wolves. Studies in Alaska, Minnesota, Michigan , and parts of Canada show that a family made up of male, female, and pups is the basic pack unit. Other adults are pups of previous years or, more rarely, adults from other packs. Adolescent

At first this White Wolf was distrusted by the others, but eventually they took her in and treated her as one of their own. The White Wolf was revered as a prize among the wolves, and she was taken as the Alpha female to the Alpha male. The White Wolf by this time had accepted her role in the pack, but she knew something was amiss. She did not age. She was as immortal as the Power that had created

Three wolves: the parents may have mad love three times.  Two wolves: the first coupling the child may have seen was the two parents more ferarum, or perhaps even two dogs.  One wolf: the wolf is the father, as we all knew from the start.  Zero wolves: he lost his tail, he is not just a castrater but also castrated.  Deleuze and Guattari, "1914: One or Several Wolves?"

Wolf packs also have special relationships. In the passage it states that the wolves take care of the baby wolves. The leader of the wolf pack tells the pack what to do. Some of the wolves go and help find food to take care of the others and when the female wolf has her babies she is treated very nice. The other wolves gets the mother food so she does not have to leave her babies. When they can start walking the mother to help the pack again. Each wolf has a part in their pack. Wolves has one of the most complex series of relationships in the whole animal kingdom. This goes back to the kittens and goes back to the kittens and dogs because they help each other out with different things. In the the other passage it talks about a giraffe and a ostrich. It revealed that they both care for each other like they would for themselves. For example Wilma likes to snuggle up with her friend and Bea cleans off Wilma with her long tongue. That is a reason that dogs can care for baby

The details of Claudette’s interaction with her mother show how much Claudette has changed since she left her home.Claudette will likely not fit in with her real family anymore as she and her family are poles apart in their cultures now. She changed so much that her own mother does not recognize her at her first look and "recoil[s] from [Claudette], as if [she] was a stranger". Her mother needs to use her wolf instincts to verify Claudette's identity: she "sniff[s] [Claudette] for a long moment" to check if it is really her. Claudette's mother "[sinks] her teeth into [Claudette's] ankle, looking proud and sad.", which Mirabella's behavior and the kind of habits Claudette lost after she moved to ST. Lucy's. After her identity being confirmed

Then the big bad wolves that changed into dogs became part of the family. Almost all the families that own dogs treat them like a part of the family. In the story How