The short story, “The Scarlet Ibis”, written by James Hurst tells the story set in the rural area of North Carolina at a small farm. The narrator tells the story of his younger brother Doodle. Doodle is physically impaired and unintentionally creates hardships for him. The narrator attempts to help Doodle participate in normal activities. In the end, Doodle dies as a result of over exhaustion, and his brother leaving him stranded out in the rain. In the story, the author uses many different types of weather, settings, and seasons, to help communicate the theme of taking pride in the way we look and act, but not looking down upon others. Weather conditions such as the rain, and setting such as the swamp largely impact the story. Within the story, seasons reflect the characters’ emotions and foreshadow future events. In the beginning of the story, the author uses imagery to draw a picture of the time between summer and fall. Summer is seen to be a happy and joyous time. Transitioning from summer to fall is not seen as an ecstatic time, parallelling Doodle’s death during that period. “...summer was dead but autumn had not been yet been born…” (Hurst, 1). Going forward in the story, the narrator decides to teach Doodle how to walk. During this period, the author describes it as, “ We were down in …show more content…
The setting takes place on a cotton farm in North Carolina. The area is desolate, rural, and the time period takes place during World War 1 (you know because they mention Woodrow Wilson.) The brothers characters’ relate a lot to the war that is going on around them. First, the brother tries to make Doodle like himself teaching him his ways like in wars they attack a country because it is not like their own. Also, Doodle is compared to the scarlet Ibis, both find themselves in alien environments that they cannot survive in. This could be seen as a comparison between soldiers