“return to the woods” (326, 328). She is truly caught between two worlds, one that is natural and unrefined, but is her home, while the other is civilized and kempt, but is foreign and harsh. Being at St. Lucy’s, “a Halfway House,” exemplifies this purgatory Claudette is in where these girls are forced to choose one culture or “end up shunned by both species.” This instills a fear of being an outcast and not belonging in not just one group, but all forms of society. Even in her wolf life, “[Knowing] Your Place”, and recognizing where one is accepted in society, is the highest commandment Claudette can follow. Because of this deep-rooted mentality, Claudette begins to abandon all of her former wolf-like traits to become a “naturalized [citizen] of human society” (327). As she loses her former compassion and becomes more human, “[her] own scent [became] foreign in [that] strange place” (327). The very thing that identifies and connects Claudette to her old life, scent, has become a foreign entity in an even more foreign place where she is trying to adapt, showing that she is not accepted in ether society. Once Claudette “graduated from St. Lucy’s”, she now, in theory, has become a functioning and civilized member of human society (339). After this stage, Claudette should “find it easy to move between the two cultures”, but when she returns to her parents, “[her] mother recoiled from [her], as if [she] [was] a stranger (339, 340). The notion that she is accepted by both societies is a complete lie: instead, she is now an outsider in her old home and a likely outcast in human society. She is now “telling [her] first human lie. [She’s] home”, but in actuality is accepted by neither society. In True Diary, Arnold struggles with finding his place in society because of preconceived stereotypes and ingrained cycles that confine Native Americans to reservations and leave them on the outskirts of society. Native Americans have experienced oppression and dehumanization from white people from the early days of colonization, where they were forced to abandon their homes and treated as nothing more than animals. From the
[90] Little Brown House Review Twenty-Three