St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves Summary

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Ironic Implications
Throughout history, the belief that one culture is superior to another, or ethnocentrism, has eradicated cultures and created identity crises across the globe. People belonging to seemingly superior cultures have exerted influence and attempted to teach people belonging to assumed inferior cultures how to behave. The short story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell demonstrates the problems with this approach by using the metaphors of a wolf culture and a human culture.One wolf-girl, Claudette, tries very hard to become a civilized human. Her sister, Mirabella, on the other hand, exhibits little interest in adapting to the new culture. Ultimately, both Claudette and Mirabella fail to assimilate, but Claudette hides her failure, while all the girls witness Mirabella’s. In “St. Lucy’s,” Russell argues through ironic tone, characterization, and foreshadowing that forcing …show more content…
Lucy’s” illustrates that while the girls in the story seem to still believe that they will one day assimilate into human society, perhaps they will fail to belong to either culture. The girls wonder about their sister asking, “Whatever will become of Mirabella?” and in turn, they worry about their own future thinking, “Whatever will become of me?” (242). As the girls ponder these questions, the audience begins to sense that perhaps the girls will fail to assimilate. The audience realizes that the girls not only have little chance of a future with the humans, but that they also won’t likely return to the wolves when the nuns show Claudette a slideshow ending with “DO YOU WANT TO END UP SHUNNED BY BOTH SPECIES?” (243). The audience then begins to truly see the irony in her situation because they realize that even if she successfully completes the program, her life will still be a failure. The real horror of ethnocentrism lies in the fact that the entire concept of success means they will fail to fit in with either
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