...Did big brother kill Doodle? Can Pride be a destructive force? Pride is a sense of one’s own proper dignity or value; self respect. Pride can be a destructive force. Brothers pride was destructive when he let his little brother die. Brother was always leaving Doodle behind. He was always talking about killing him, and he was embarrassed about having a disabled brother. Did big brother kill Doodle? There is a lot of evidence on how big brother did kill Doodle. On page 345 it says, “I began to make plans to kill him by smothering him with a pillow.” He planned on killing Doodle with a pillow. So, ever since Doodle was a baby, big brother, planned on killing him. On page 353 it says, “ The faster I walked, the faster he walked, so I began to...
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...Doodle is a one of a kind. He loves to have fun but, he some troubles that stop him. The short story The Scarlet Ibis By James Hurst is about a young boy named Doodle. Doodle is born with some unfortunate disabilities. Doodle and his brother fight together to help doodle become more normal. But, doodle gets really sick and he passes away. The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst is full of conflicts, emotion and happiness. The story begins with it’s first conflict that it seems hopeless but they don't give up. “It seemed so hopeless from the beginning that it’s a miracle I didn’t give up” (Hurst). This quote from the text explains that when his brother started to help him and wanted to teach him how to walk he was hopeless and knew that he was never...
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...Many enjoy ghost stories with haunted houses because of the thrill. Some stories however, include themes of guilt in which a character is haunted by his past. In the short story “The Scarlet Ibis” James Hurst employs flashback and mood to create the emotion of guilt that haunts the narrator. Hurst utilizes flashback by giving a sense of guilt emitting from the narrator. Throughout the story, the author gives examples of the narrator’s selfish actions, which is how he treats his crippled brother, Doodle. Then, Hurst portrays mood by writing the narrator’s thoughts of what horrible actions the narrator did to Doodle. The narrator feels ashamed of having a disabled brother, and feels the need to push Doodle to become “normal”, and this pressure makes the narrator look back and feel guilt. One way the narrator represents guilt is through flashback. Throughout the...
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...Ibis from the heresy of rain.” In James Hurst’s short story; “The Scarlet Ibis”, two brothers create a good relationship over a short amount of time. There are three main concepts within the short story. Pride, love and death. Pride; there’s not much to say. Brother ends up doing anything to Doodle for his own pride. Brother has done actions for his own pride instead of doing it for Doodle’s well-being. When Brother and Doodle showed Mama, Daddy and aunt Nicey that Doodle can walk brother thought, “They did not know that I did it for myself, that pride.” When Brother taught Doodle how to walk he did it for his own pride. Little did Doodle know Brother wasn’t...
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...The short story, “The Scarlet Ibis” is about two brothers that overcome adversity. One of the brothers, a mentally challenged boy named doodle learns how to walk with the help of his thirteen year old brother. The author, James Hurst, from the short story, “The Scarlet Ibis” uses diction and figurative language to prove that the character doodle is a clumsy, caring, and scared character. The author uses diction and figurative language to show that doodle is a clumsy person. One example of this is when the author writes, “When he crawled, he crawled backward, as if he were in reverse and couldn't change gears”. The author during this part of the book is using figurative language to further prove his point. Doodle is not actually in reverse like...
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...by the reactions of other characters. In the short story the thoughts of Brother really have an impact on the theme. Brother’s thoughts cause Brother’s pride to become fairly ignorant. This can be seen as early as the fourth paragraph where he thinks, “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,” (163). In this time his pride wouldn't let him have an invalid brother so he planned on killing him. Even though he doesn't kill him in the end his ignorant actions cause Doodle to die, “ I ran as fast as i could, leaving him far behind with a wall of rain dividing us,” (172). Because of this...
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...death. Doodle is his brothers Scarlet Ibis, and Doodle dies because of his brother. His brother tries so hard to change who Doodle is and all that it leads to is a death. In the short story “The Scarlet Ibis”, James Hurst uses conflict, symbolism, and irony to develope the message that everyone needs to accept others for who they are, and not try to change them or the outcome will be negative. James Hurst uses internal conflict to show that changing others for selfish reasons can lead to tragic consequences. The main reason that Doodle can walk is because of the narrator’s selfish attitude of caring what others think. When the narrator says “I was embarrassed at having a brother who couldn’t walk”(336), his egotistical personality defiantly shows through; he is more concerned of what others think rather than the fact that his impaired brother is unable to walk (CS2). The only motivation to...
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...and do not look at it in a negative light, but a positive one. In this short story, The Scarlet Ibis, by James Hurst, the character Doodle was portrayed as persevering, imaginative, and saint like. In the short story the author described Doodle as persevering, imaginative, and saint like. Hurst shows that Doodle is persevering by stating in the story, “When he was two, if you laid him on his stomach, he began to move straining himself terribly. The doctor said that with his weak heart this strain would probably kill him, but it didn’t. Trembling, he’d push himself up, turning red first, then a soft purple, and finally collapse back onto the bed like a worn-out doll”(Hurst 464). This is showing that even as an adolescent in unbearable pain, that should have killed him, he still fought to make sure that he could get up on his own. He understood that he has difficulties and hardships, but works through them so maybe one day his problems will be less challenging and less frequent. The author depicted Doodle as imaginative by articulating, “ My lies were scary, involved, and usually pointless, but Doodle’s were...
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...is a short story about a baby named Doodle who’s born with disabilities and how his brother and family treat him. Doodle is very determined, and wanted to be like everyone else. He learns and copies many things that his brother did. Throughout my essay I’m going to show how Doodle becomes a part of the family and learns how to do many things that are hard for him, but simple tasks that are easy for his family and regular people. Doodle is determined to learn new things. Since he had many problems with growing and learning things at the right age he had learned to crawl late. The passage says that,”When he crawled, he crawled backward, as if he were in reverse and couldn’t change gears.” The passage also says that, “Although Doodle learned to crawl, he showed no signs of walking, but he wasn’t idle.” Doodle also had learned to talk and when he did the passage says that, “He talked so much that we all quit listening to what he said.Doodle was determined to learn to walk so his brother says that,”Within a few months Doodle had learned to walk well and his go-cart was put up in the barn loft (it’s still there) beside his little mahogany...
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...you will always end up where you were meant to be." This is a story of a boy that was expected to die but instead, is born with disabilities. Over the course of the story, he learns to do things like how to walk and play because of his older brother’s help. One day his older brother pushed him too far and caused the boy to die. James Hurst uses symbolism to make “The Scarlet Ibis” more interesting. In the short story “The Scarlet Ibis”, the author makes the bird symbolize Doodle. The bird and Doodle have similar deaths because they are both pushed beyond what they are capable of doing. You can tell from when the family watches the scarlet ibis on the tree, “At that moment, the bird began to flutter but the wings were uncoordinated” (Hurst 602). This shows...
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...is a short story written by James Hurst. This story is about the life of a young boy named Doodle and his older brother, the Narrator. In the story, Doodle is crippled for life. As Doodle grows older his older brother's pride leads him to teach Doodle how to walk. James Hurst uses foreshadowing and conflict to show Doodle's empathy and loyalty. The use of foreshadowing shows how he is empathetic because he can feel empathy for something like the ibis. For example, when the family watches the scarlet ibis die, Doodle says, "I'm going to bury it." This shows that Doodle is caring enough to care for an animal he has no relation to in the story. This is because Doodle could reflect the scarlet ibis, and what was happening to the ibis upon himself. In addition, Doodle's mother would not allow him to even touch the bird, yet Doodle disobeys and buries the scarlet ibis. This reveals that his empathy for the ibis was so grand that he disobeyed his mother. The reason why is that Doodle treated...
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...something in your life that embarrases you? If so, you probably know how brother feels in the short story “The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst. In the story brother is embarrassed by his brother Doodle. He forces Doodle to do things he really wasn’t capable of doing. Brothers selfishness throughout the beginning, middle, and end of the story help prove the theme that you should love people for who they are. Throughout the story I think brother was consistently selfish. He changed his brothers name from William Armstrong to Doodle because that name was too sophisticated for someone like him. At the start of the story, brother showed Doodle his coffin because nobody thought he was going to survive: “It was bad enough having an invalid brother, but having one who possibly was not there at all was unbearable, so I began to make plans to kill him by smothering him with a pillow” (James Hurst 169). This shows that brother doesn’t have any love or feelings for Doodle. These are ways brother acted selfish and did not care much about his brother....
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...According to Mahatma Gandhi, “Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up,” the short story “The Scarlett Ibis,” by James Hurst tells a story about how the narrator’s pride led him to kill his young brother indirectly. The author uses pride as the central theme of the story to tell that since the pride inside of the narrator make him taste the taste of success, his pride is already beginning to turn to spite, and foreshadow a tragedy. The narrator’s embarrassment of his young brother lead him to teach his brother to walk, and the success makes him selfish. In the story, it writes, “When Doodle was five years old, I was embarrassed at having a brother of that age who couldn’t walk, so I set out to teach him”...
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...Literary Analysis: “The Scarlet Ibis” Can pride affect others in a bad way? The topic of the short story “The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst, the narrator helps his brother Doodle(William Armstrong) to accomplish things no one thought was possible because of his bad heart. But in the end he pressured his brother too much and Doodle dies, all because he wanted pride from it. The theme adolescents that pride can both be a good and a bad thing, which you can see through the plot of the story. The narrator reflects on his actions and realizes how selfish he was towards Doodle. In one line it shows that the narrator is planning on teaching doodle more but he saw it as his own victory instead of Doodles victory, “Once I had succeeded in teaching Doodle...
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...James Hurst’s short story, “The Scarlet Ibis,” has a theme, pride is egregious, which Hurst demonstrates through a series of quotes with the main ideas of offering help only due to pride, the belief of infallibility, and pushing someone farther than their limits. The theme can be first expressed when Brother only teaches Doodle to walk only because of his pride. After Brother teaches Doodle to walk, he reflects upon his reasons of doing so in the excerpt,“They 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,”(Hurst, 4). In the previously mentioned situation pride is egregious because Brother is embarrassed about Doodles...
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