Stage 1 is the beginning of the story, and is the beginning of the long journey for the pack. Claudette and the girls will eventually learn about the human culture and learn about themselves along the way, and where they belong or don’t belong. But before they can become civilized and human-like, they have a whole journey ahead of them. The Jesuit Handbook explains:
Stage 1 is the initial period is one in which everything is new, exciting, and interesting for your students. It is fun for your students to explore their new environment. (Russell pg. 237) Claudette and the girls start the story off by attempting to make them feel at home: tearing up their room, spraying ‘yellow streams’ on their bunks, and overall acting as if they weren’t in St. Lucy’s …show more content…
The pack in return seeks to please the humans, or in this case the nuns. Claudette wants to please the nuns because she wants to also please her parents, and is willing to become human-like, but isn’t very open about it with the pack in fears of becoming shunned by the pack, like Jeanette has. Mirabella wasn’t getting better. She was getting worse; she was a failing, as the nuns called her. She couldn’t let go of her nature to be like a wolf:
She was still loping around on all fours (which the nuns had taught us to see looked unnatural and ridiculous ─ we could barely believe it now, the shame of it, that we used to locomote like that!). (pg. 240) The girls are beginning to comprehend how ridiculous they actually looked like when walking on all fours, like any other wolf would do. They are finally becoming conscious and are starting to see themselves through the eyes of a human, therefore feeling shameful. Claudette is a ‘good girl’. She wasn’t great, she wasn’t terrible, but she still was more willing to change than most of the girls, but not quite at level with Jeanette. However, Claudette herself