Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Trinity Harwell
Mrs. Weis
Advanced English 1
Period 4
February 5, 2014
In The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst, the narrator helps his crippled brother,
Doodle, learn to walk and be active. The fact that the narrator helps for his own
benefit, knowing that his brother could easily die, and the symbolism of a small bird,
shows how one persons pride can lead to another persons downfall.
The narrator didnt want to be known as the boy with the crippled brother,
healthy brother so badly that he wouldve killed Doodle. The narrator said, It was
bad enough having an invalid brother, but having one who possibly was not all there
was unbearable, so I began to make plans to kill him by smothering him with a
pillow. Murdering someone is probably the worst thing that anyone could do, let
alone killing their own sibling, and yet the narrator was selfish enough to do so. It
was for his own benefit that he helped Doodle after he realized that Doodle was in
fact all there. He helped Doodle so that when they were in public together, people
would think that he had a perfectly healthy brother instead of a crippled one.
Otherwise, he thought that people would look down on him. Once he taught Doodle
to walk a little bit though, he realized that his intentions shouldve been elsewhere.
When Doodle presented his walking self to the family, the narrator even said, They
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did not know that I did it for myself; that pride, whose slave I was, spoke to me
louder than all their voices, and that Doodle walked only because I was ashamed of
having a crippled brother. He didnt tell anyone that he helped Doodle for himself,
but he had to live with having that knowledge. He knew then how selfish he was,
and how pride could be a bad thing. Even after figuring that out though, he still
Everybody knew how frail Doodle was. When he was young he used to try to
move himself around, but didnt get very far. The doctor said that with his weak
heart this strain would probably kill him, and it very well could have killed him.
Despite that, the narrator took Doodle to perform dangerous tasks, tasks in which
healthy children could die from if they over-worked themselves. It almost seemed as
if he was trying to kill Doodle. He said, I made him swim until he turned blue and
row until he couldnt lift an oar. Its not a good sign when a person turns blue. They
of other things. Rowing can increase heart rate, and if Doodle could not lift an oar,
he had been rowing too long for a crippled boy like himself. It was no secret that
Doodle was frail and delicate, but the narrator kept pushing harder, regardless of
One day when the narrator and his family were eating, they heard a noise
outside and went out to see what it was. It was a small red bird called a scarlet ibis,
sitting up in a tree. It was a tropical bird, so the family guessed that it had gotten
carried by a storm. Its trip took its toll though. The narrator said, the bird began to
flutter, but the wings were uncoordinated, and amid much flapping and a spray of
feathers, it tumbled down, bumping through the limbs of the bleeding tree and
landing at our feet with a thud. The scarlet ibis broke its neck and died right there.
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The bird was symbolic of Doodle. Both were small and mangled, and the author
used the bird to foreshadow later events. When the narrators aunt saw the bird,
she knew that something was coming. She said, Dead birds is bad luck, and as it
turned out, she was right. The narrator and Doodle were outside in a storm that
very same day, and the narrator got irritated with Doodle and his slowness, so he
left them alone in the rain. When he went back to find Doodle, he found him curled
up on the ground with a stream of blood flowing out of his mouth. Doodle had died
The narrator had so much pride that he wanted to kill Doodle with a pillow,
and although he restrained from doing that, he practically killed him anyways. If he
had stayed with Doodle in the storm, Doodles death probably would have been
prevented. He wanted to help Doodle for his own benefit, even though he knew how
frail Doodle was, and he didnt pay attention to his aunt when she warned him of
bad luck. His pride kept him from being known as the boy with the crippled
brother, but it turned him into the boy responsible for his brothers death. His
pride lead to Doodles ability to walk, but it also killed Doodle, demonstrating how