Karen Russell's St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised By Wolves"

1181 Words3 Pages

“St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, by Karen Russell is the story of a pack of human girls who were born of werewolves. They are taken from their families in the wilderness and brought to a St. Lucy’s. It was here that they were to be civilized. The process of civilization involved stripping them of their personal and cultural identities and retraining them in a manner that was acceptable to the human world. This is a close analogy to the Residential Schools of Cultural Assimilation for native Americans from 1887 to the early 1950’s. 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. The Dawes Allotment Act of 1887 brought about the policy of Cultural Assimilation for the Native American peoples. Headed by Richard Henry Pratt, it founded several Residential Schools for the re-education and civilization of Native Americans. Children from various tribes and several reservations were removed from their families with the goal of being taught how to be c... ... middle of paper ... ...tion process. Works Cited Unseen Tears: The Native American Boarding (Residential) School Experience in Western New York. Prod. Ron Douglas. Perf. Survivors. Native American Community Services of Erie & Niagara County, 2013. YouTube. Allotment Act 1887 and Assimilation." Allotment Act 1887 and Assimilation. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2014. Russell, Karen. "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves." Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. 4th ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. 1073-085. Print. Official Report of the Nineteenth Annual Conference of Charities and Correction (1892), 46–59. Reprinted in Richard H. Pratt, “The Advantages of Mingling Indians with Whites,” Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the “Friends of the Indian” 1880–1900(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 260–271.

Show More
Related

  • Dawes Severalty Act (1887)

    979 Words  | 2 Pages

    Dawes Severalty Act (1887). In the past century, with the end of the warfare between the United. States and Indian tribes and nations, the United States of America. continued its efforts to acquire more land for the Indians. About this time the government and the Indian reformers tried to turn Indians.

    Read More

  • St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolf Analysis

    1177 Words  | 3 Pages

    “St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell is a story about Claudette and her pack of wolf sisters learning how to adapt to the human society. Claudette starts off the program with a mentality of a wolf, like the rest of the girls. As she progresses into individual stages, she starts to change and adapt towards different characteristics of the human mentality. She shows good progress towards the human side based on what the Jesuit Handbook of Lycanthropia Culture Shock describes on behalf of what is suspected of the girls. But at the end of the story, Claudette is not fully adapted to the human society and mentality.

    Read More

  • St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, by Karen Russel

    938 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Native American Boarding Schools During the Westward Expansion

    592 Words  | 2 Pages

    People know about the conflict between the Indian's cultures and the settler's cultures during the westward expansion. Many people know the fierce battles and melees between the Indians and the settlers that were born from this cultural conflict. In spite of this, many people may not know about the systematic and deliberate means employed by the U.S. government to permanently rid their new land of the Indians who had lived their own lives peacefully for many years. There are many strong and chilling reasons and causes as to why the settlers started all of this perplexity in the first place. There was also a very strong and threatening impact on the Native Americans through the schooling that stained the past and futures of Native Americans not only with blood but also with emotion. It was all a slow and painful plan of the "white man" to hopefully get rid of the Indian culture, forever. The Native American schools were created in an attempt to destroy the Native American way of life, their culture, beliefs and tradi...

    Read More

  • The Impact of Sports in Native American Boarding Schools

    1670 Words  | 4 Pages

    At these boarding schools, Native American children were able to leave their Indian reservations to attend schools that were often run by wealthy white males. These individuals often did not create these schools with the purest of intentions for they often believed that land occupied by Native American Tribes should be taken from them and put to use; it is this belief that brought about the purpose of the boarding schools which was to attempt to bring the Native American community into mainstream society (Bloom, 1996). These boarding schools are described to have been similar to a military institution or a private religious school. The students were to wear uniforms and obey strict rules that included not speaking one’s native tongue but rather only speaking English. Punishments for not obeying such rules often included doing laborious chores or being physically reprimanded (Bloom, 1996). Even with hars...

    Read More

  • Examination of The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978

    2838 Words  | 6 Pages

    The history of Indian Child Welfare Act derived from the need to address the problems with the removal of Indian children from their communities. Native American tribes identified the problem of Native American children being raised by non-native families when there were alarming numbers of children being removed from their h...

    Read More

  • leaving atlanta

    531 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the first section of the book it starts off with a little girl named Tasha. Tasha is in the Fifth grade, and doesn’t really have many friends. It describes her dilemma with trying to fit in with all the other girls, and being “popular”, and trying to deal with a “Kid Snatcher”. The summer before school started she practiced at all the games the kid’s play, so she could be good, and be able to get them to like her. The girls at school are not very nice to her at all. Her struggle with being popular meets her up with Jashante, a held back Fifth ...

    Read More

  • St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolf Summary

    494 Words  | 1 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • How Did The Dawes Act Characterize The Gilded Age

    1371 Words  | 3 Pages

    The mission of the act, stated in the first section, is to “provide in severalty to Indians on the various reservations and to extend the protection of the laws of the United States” (Dawes Severalty). Motives of providing “protection of the laws,” compelled the Indians Rights Association to support the effort, labelling it a “humanitarian reform” (Sendrow). Despite this label, the Dawes Act did not fully represent reparations because its measures ultimately benefitted whites just as much as Indians. For example, in Section 5, Dawes adds that “if in the opinion of the President it shall be for the best interests of said tribe, it shall be lawful for the Secretary of Interior to negotiate with such Indian tribe for the purchase and release” (Dawes Severalty). Although Dawes takes into account the Indians’ “best interest,” the President makes this dubious assessment that leaves room to justify seizure of land for white economic gain. Later in the section, Dawes details that the land will be doled out “in tracts not exceeding one hundred and sixty acres to any one person” (Dawes Act). While Congress appears to be granting properly sized homesteads, they conveniently equivocate that their generosity carries little burden because, as detailed later, the land granted was

    Read More

  • The Theme Of Setting In St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves

    1143 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are many fictional elements that are important when it comes to short stories. These elements help the reader understand the story in more depth, and help to gain a better understanding of what the author’s purpose is. One of these elements is setting. Setting is the time and place in which a story takes place, it can help determine the mood, influence how characters’ act, change the dialog in the story and can reflect how the characters interact in society. In the short story, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” the setting is a very important element to show the development of the girls and how they changed throughout the story. There are two different places which we consider the setting. There is the church and the cave. With these two different settings we see different lessons being taught in each

    Read More

  • How Did Grover Cleveland Influence Politics

    1469 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Cleveland's view, the Native Americans were wards of the nation, like wayward but promising children in need of a guardian. Regarding himself as an Indian reformer, Cleveland sought to persuade Native Americans to forego their old tribal ways. He sought to be assimilate them into white society by means of education, private land ownership, and parental guidance from the federal government. Though he did not campaign for the bill, he eagerly supported and signed into law the Dawes Act of 1887, which empowered the President to allot land within the reservations to individual Indians—with all surplus land reverting to the public domain. It was a disastrous policy that robbed Native Americans of much of their land and did little to improve their way of life.

    Read More

  • St Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolf Analysis

    667 Words  | 2 Pages

    I do think that by the end of Saint Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Claudette became a citizen of human society. There are many reasons why. One notices her changes gradually throughout the story.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Richard Pratt: Kill The Indian And Save The Man

    1072 Words  | 3 Pages

    In 1887 the federal government launched boarding schools designed to remove young Indians from their homes and families in reservations and Richard Pratt –the leader of Carlisle Indian School –declared, “citizenize” them. Richard Pratt’s “Kill the Indian… and save the man” was a speech to a group of reformers in 1892 describing the vices of reservations and the virtues of schooling that would bring young Native Americans into the mainstream of American society.

    Read More

  • Social Influence and Society

    1347 Words  | 3 Pages

    Russell, Karen. “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”. Comp. John Schilb and John Clifford. Making Literature Matter. Print.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Education In The Glass Castle

    1031 Words  | 3 Pages

    Jeannette and her siblings were left without a proper education due to the fact of their parents' weird way living. The Walls children were always moving from place to place because of Rex and Rosemary. Parent interaction in their children's educational learning has a big effect in the ending. If a parent is involved, asks about their child's schoolwork, how their day was, etc., the child will do better in school because their parent actually cares. On the other hand, if a parent rarely shows interest in their child's school studies, the child may believe that they do not have to try hard in their studies because the parent will no...

    Read More

More about Karen Russell's St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised By Wolves"

Open Document