The Scarlet Ibis Selfish Analysis

The Scarlet Ibis displays this concept, and how “bad pride” can lead to guilt and tragedy. The Scarlet Ibis is a story about a boy and his little brother, Doodle, who has a deformity that causes his head to be abnormally large and his body small. When Doodle dies at the end of this story, a question remains to the reader: was Doodle’s death the brother’s fault, because of his pride? It is the brother’s

In the rainstorm, the narrator ran from Doodle, and Doodle must have fallen and died somewhere, because when his brother came back for him, Doodle was dead. The narrator is responsible for Doodle’s death because he overworked Doodle and expected

It puts so much pressure on Doodle that it made him give up. It's the narrators fault for the following reasons: he was selfish, he was embarrassed of him, and he pressured him. The narrator was being selfish as he admitted that he did it for himself because he was ashamed of Doodle being crippled. Doodle looks up to his brother and would do anything for his approval. The narrator knows that his brother's heart is weak, forces Doodle

Turning from a prideful boy to being merciful toward his dead brother. In fact, it all began when his brother was born, “with a tiny body which was red and shriveled like an old man’s” (595). Doodle is weakened and incapable of doing activities normal kids do at his age. The narrator encourages Doodle to keep on pushing, but no sooner does the narrator learn that pushing Doddle over his limitations will sooner or later kill him. The narrator kills Doodle indirectly, as a consequence of the lack of knowledge he has about Doodle’s medical issues, and as said before, being enveloped in pride.

The narrator from "The Scarlet Ibis", causes Doodles death because he left him off in the rain. The brother was angry doodle had failed his expectations. Doodle stepped off the boat and collapsed onto the mud. (p.425) They both felt like they had failed. “Brother, Brother, Brother, do not leave me!

Knowles uses symbols such as the breaking of Phineas’s leg and Phineas’s untimely death to show that Gene and Phineas’s friendship is slowly breaking apart. “Eventually a fact emerged; it was one of his legs, which had been ‘shattered’,” (61). The break being described as shattered can also represent the friendship and show Gene’s betrayal of Phineas. Now that Phineas has fallen out of the tree, possibly because of Gene, this begins to rip apart their friendship, Phineas refusing to believe his best friend could do it, and Gene is unsure if he caused it and thinking something else was to blame. “As I was moving the bone some of the marrow must have escaped into his blood stream and gone directly to his heart and stopped it, “ (193).

When the narrator threatens to leave Doodle all by himself. “Then I’ll leave you here all by yourself.” Another way the reader knows the narrator is cruel is when he leaves his fallen brother behind. “I run as fast as I could, leaving him behind with a wall of rain dividing us.” This is cruel because his brother can’t fend for himself because of his disability. These

Hurst suggests that expectations are also a form of egotism that can lead to resentment; hence coming into conflict with one’s identity, such as alteration and remorse. Doodle’s desire was to be loved and supported by his family. He was invalid - he could not walk; thus everyone had low expectations towards him and thought he would die except for Aunt Nicey. His brother (the narrator) tried to kill him as he saw him an unbearable disappointment and his father had built him a mahogany coffin. For instance, “It was I who renamed him [...] Crawling backwards made him look like a Doodlebug, […] because nobody expects much from someone called Doodle.” Society’s attentiveness is predominantly towards the aspects of and in this story Doodle’s impairment seemed to have negative impacts on him that the society has caused.

“It is better to lose your pride with someone you love than to lose someone you love with your useless pride” - Unknown “The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst is the story of a boy and his sickly younger brother, Doodle. The older brother (the narrator) was embarrassed that Doodle was unable to do normal, physical things. The narrator set off to teach his brother to walk, swim, and run, but his pride caused him to push his little brother too hard, which eventually led to Doodle’s death. The narrator was heartbroken that he caused his brother to die. By examining pride’s role in “The Scarlet Ibis” and in real life, it is evident that pride can be dangerous and destructive.

‘Doodle!’ I screamed… For a long, long time, it seemed forever, I lay there crying sheltering my fallen scarlet ibis from the heresy of rain.” (Hurst 426). The way the narrator details his brother’s body is an exact description of the scarlet ibis’ dead body. For example, the scarlet ibis is red, its neck is long, and its legs are curved, just like Doodle’s dead body. Moreover, the narrator refers to Doodle as “my fallen scarlet ibis” which shows that the scarlet ibis symbolizes Doodle. After the death of his brother, the narrator realizes his error.