Lycanthropic Culture Shock Character Analysis

In Karen Russell's book “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” the girls learn what it is like to be human and how they adjust to our culture. The main character is a wolf girl named Claudette, we watch her go from cote human as she moves through the stages of Lycanthropic Culture Shock. During the first stage of St. Lucy’s home for girls Claudette has developed as the handbook (epigraph) tells her to. The handbook says that everything is new and exciting for your students and that they will enjoy learning about their new environment.

By the end of the story Claudette fully adapted to the new culture. In stage 1, Claudette and her sisters have arrived to “St Lucy’s Home.” At first, our pack was all hair and snarls and floor-thumping joy” (pg 237). the girl’s barley knew about how to act like actual humans.

This sink-or-swim mentality is represented between Mirabella and Jeanette, who is the push and pull. Mirabella is the unmoving rock that is thrown into the puddle and sinks, Jeanette was adaptive and understood that she had to change to survive. Mirabella’s naivety was her downfall, and Claudette was the middle– she was the second-best reader (271) but struggled to remember the human teachings when she was at the dance (273). Claudette only saw her family at the end of her time at St. Lucy’s, and in her trek, through the woods, she felt sadder and sadder (274). As she goes back home, she realizes that she knows nothing about her

“Life’s too short to care about what other people think” (Jeannette Walls). It is good to not care what other people think, so stay true in life and live it to the fullest. The book, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, is a memoir that tells the story of Jeannette’s difficult family and her poor living conditions, that cause life to be difficult for her. She struggles to move past all the hardships in life and she learns how to overcome the majority of them, so she can develop into her own person. Even though her family can be a little peculiar, they possess a strong bond with each other and they always seek to help one another out.

Initially, Cady did not know how to act in the social setting she was placed in, therefore she had to learn along the way what the group norms were in the now scenery she encountered. Certain actions or expectation of others that were came back form her stay in African did no longer apply to those in America; she was now exposed to negative influences. She deviated from a collectivistic to an individualistic community. Once she able to gain access into this new found crowd, she began to conform to her new group and demonstrate the stages of group development. For example the forming stage when she first began to associate herself with the new group, she behaved polite with them to the extent of obeying them with certain suggestion like what

She is not comfortable in the human culture if she resorts to her natural tendencies. While she is preparing to dance, she, “rubbed a pumpkin muffin all over [her] body earlier that morning,” (Russell 242) to mask her scent. This action not only creates humor but also shows that Claudette is not ready to go back and forth from human culture and wolf culture. Normal humans would use perfume to mask a smell, Claudette chose to use a pumpkin muffin because she knew it would mask her odor. This is not a human action, therefore, she does not meet the expectation of Stage

In stages, 1, 2, and 3 Claudette is going through stages to become more civilized. On Claudettes journey to conforming to human, she has faced many struggles in becoming human. To start, Claudette “...was irritated, bewildered, depressed”, her pack is “uncomfortable, and between languages.” She is struggling in becoming human because she is stuck between two barriers.

However, she still preforms bad wolf habits showing that she has not successfully adapted to the human culture. Little things such as translating wolf into English in her head before saying them is one example of the little things that go unnoticed. Still at stage three, Claudette wags her invisible tail, repeats the steps of being a well-mannored student, and licks her packs cheeks to comfort them. Claudette tries extremely hard to welcome her new culture but some things happen instinctively exhbiting that she is not ready to leave. For example, Claudette was at the dance and got mad at a boy so she instinctively displays her wolf personality.

People who endure dislocation feel out of place and have many mixed emotions. Karen Russell’s “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” tells the story of a group of girls who suffer from lycanthropy including Jeanette, Claudette, and Mirabella. The “pack” of girls go through many stages to rehabilitate to their human identity. The girls experience culture shock and have to work as they progress through the stage.

She wants to tear off her shoes and run away. She is in a panic of what to do. It's like she’s going through culture shock. Claudette is extremely

Claudette tried her best to adapt to the humans culture and all the feral children had spent months learning to assimilate into human culture. However, despite her perseverance through all these challenges, some of the wolf in them still remained. This would later cause Claudette to stand out in both societies due to the wolf characteristics that still remained (thus not fitting in with the human societies) and the human characteristics that she learned (thus not fitting in the the werewolf societies). Feral diction also appeared in the story when Claudette attempted to dance to sausalito with Kyle. When she stepped onto the dance floor, the panicked and the feral part of her returned; Russell writes, “I threw back my head, a howl clawing its way up my throat” (250).

Not great and not terrible, solidly middle of the pack” (Russell 232). This idea of Claudette being a good but imperfect character connects to her relation to the Handbook, as she mostly follows along with its expectations but occasionally lags

In the short story, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” written by Karen Russell, a pack of wolf girls leave their home in the woods for St. Lucy’s in order to be able to live in human society. Within the story, Russell has included epigraphs before each stage from The Jesuit Handbook for Lycanthropic Culture Shock. This handbook was for the nuns at St. Lucy’s to help guide their students. Karen Russell included the epigraphs, short quotations at the beginning of a chapter intended to suggest a theme, from the handbook to help the reader understand what the characters might be feeling or how they will act in a certain stage. In Stage One, the epigraph closely relates to the characters’ development, yet doesn’t consider that the girls could be fearful in their new home due to interactions with the nuns.

In Karen Russell’s short story, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, she develops the progression of the characters in relation to The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock. The characters, young girls raised as if they were wolves, are compared to the handbook with optimism that they will adapt to the host culture. The girls’ progression in the five set stages are critical to their development at St. Lucy’s. The author compares Claudette, the narrator, to the clear expectations the handbook sets for the girls’ development. Claudette’s actions align well with the five stages, but she has outbursts that remind her of her former self.

“By the time Vigée Le Brun came upon the artistic scene, antiquity had become a Paris fashion, and the neoclassical style was eagerly endorsed by such painters as Vien, David’s teacher… As for Le Brun, since she always wore white muslin dresses, all she needed to do was add a veil and place a wreath of flowers on her head. She took special pleasure in decking out her daughter, Julie, in similar fashion. ”53. From the time she dresses her she raises her daughter to be very much the same person as her.