The Scarlet Ibis Theme Analysis

The Guilt in Pride

Have you ever killed someone because your pride was hurt? The narrator in the short story "The Scarlet Ibis," by James Hurst, has always wanted a brother so bad. He finally gets a brother that everyone expects to die before being born. By some miracle the little brother didn’t die, so they decided to name him Doodle. At the end Doodle does die and this essay is to say if the narrator is guilty or not. The narrator didn’t really love Doodle, was cruel to him, and thought him how to stuff out of his own selfishness, so thank to the gift of pride, the narrator is guilty for the murder of his brother Doodle.

The narrator despised Doodle. When Doodle was born and alive- against what the doctor said- the narrator says, "I began to make plans to kill him by smothering him with a pillow" (Hurst 345). The narrator wants to kill his brother because he realized he would not die and because of that, won't be able to do anything physically like brothers do together. The narrator is tired of lugging Doodle around and says, "He was burden in many ways" (Hurst 345). Well, what is a better and more permanent way to get rid of a burden that

Doodle asked the narrator to not hurt him and the narrator says in reply, "Shut up, I'm not going to hurt you" (Hurst 347). Doodle was falling down every time the narrator stood him up and kept doing it over and over again and again. The narrator says, “I made him swim until he turned blue and row until he couldn’t lift an oar” (Hurst 350). As we were told earlier in the story - Doodle cannot have much strain to his heart at all, but swimming until Doodle turns blue and rowing a boat until he could not lift a paddle puts an extreme strain on Doodles heart. In “The Two Faces of Pride” the author says, “…Pride were self-centered and prove to shame” (Herbert 2). The narrator has already proved shame in having a “crippled brother” and having self-centered motives for teaching Doodle how to