Harwell 1

Trinity Harwell

Mrs. Weis

Advanced English 1

Period 4

February 5, 2014

The Theme of The Scarlet Ibis

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,

he wanted to have a healthy brother to play games with. In fact, he wanted a

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

continued to push Doodle into being a strong, healthy person.

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

could have hypothermia, or couldve stopped breathing all together, or a multitude

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

what people told him.

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

from the narrator neglecting him.

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

one persons pride can lead to another persons downfall.