Brother's Struggle In The Scarlet Ibis By Hurst

In the story “The Scarlet Ibis” a child named Doodle is born very weak and disabled. He could not walk or run until the age of 5 and has many health issues. Doodle’s older brother tried to teach him to do these things, but ends up overworking him. Later in the story, Doodle dies after falling down during a heavy storm while Brother runs away from him. Brother is at fault for Doodleś death because he is a bad brother and overworked Doodle.

Brother made Doodle work too hard when trying to teach him how to walk, run, and swim. In the story Doodle cannot do things that most people can easily do, so Brother tries to teach him to walk and then later swim. He tries way to hard and overworked Doodle. “Doodle was both tired and frightened, and when he stepped from the skiff he collapsed onto the mud” (Hurst 6). Doodle is overworked when brother teaches him how to move around on his own. It was not enough that he learned to walk, but Brother wanted to teach him to do all kinds of things. Brother took too much pride in Doodle and forced him to work too hard. Not too

When it started to storm, Doodle fell down and brother kept running away. “The knowledge that Doodle’s and my plans had come to naught was bitter, and that streak of cruelty within me awakened. I ran as fast as I could, leaving him far behind with a wall of rain dividing us” (Hurst 6). Doodle was too tired and overworked to run home in the storm which caused him to die. Brother could have ran back to save Doodle, but he was to overcome with anger over the fact that he was not able to teach Doodle sufficiently. He tried to hard to teach Doodle and they didn 't make enough progress which caused him to be upset and angry with Doodle. If he ran back to help Doodle, he may have lived. Brother, filled with anger over the lack of progress with Doodle, left him behind in the