the scarlet ibis theme essay

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Analysis of James Hurst’s The Scarlet Ibis

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on June 12, 2021

The only work of James Hurst’s to gain widespread recognition, The Scarlet Ibis  was originally published in the Atlantic Monthly in July 1960 and won the Atlantic First award that year. Rising quickly to the status of a classic, this story has been a standard feature of high school and college anthologies for more than 40 years. In 1988, and then again in 1998, the story was published in book format (only 36 pages) with illustrations by Philippe Dumas. It continues to be popular with students and is the subject of numerous Internet study guides.

“The Scarlet Ibis” is the story of two siblings, the narrator—known only as Brother—and his disabled younger brother, nicknamed Doodle. Told in retrospect by the now-adult Brother, the story seems to be at least partially confessional, describing the narrator’s childhood conflicts between love for his brother and his own pride, as well as the tragic consequences of discriminatory familial and societal expectations. Toward the end of the story, an exotic scarlet ibis appears and, as does Doodle himself, dies.

“The Scarlet Ibis” has received little or no serious critical analysis, but in those reviews that do exist various possible subthemes have been suggested, including the biblical story of Cain and Abel, Doodle as a divine or even Christ-like figure, and the specter of World War I with its loss of life and all the philosophical questions that it raised. It is clearly, however, the use of nature that guides the narrative and its metaphors. Hurst himself has said that there are three “characters” in the story: Doodle, Brother, and the setting. The story opens with Brother’s describing the Eden-like childhood that he shared with Doodle and comparing it with the sterility of his adult world. Over the course of the story, told in flashback, Brother is shown to have a country child’s awareness of and delight in nature; in fact, part of his disappointment at Doodle’s disability is that he had “wanted someone to perch with in the top fork of the great pine behind the barn, where across the fields and the swamp you could see the sea” (10). Doodle cries the first time Brother shows him the beauty of Old Woman Swamp (perhaps a pseudonym for Gaia?), the only place where the two brothers are really in harmony, where they make plans to live forever, and where societal expectations do not interfere. Even the narrative itself turns along with the cyclical movement of the seasons, Brother’s successes and failures with Doodle measured by nature’s changes.

When the scarlet ibis appears, both the psychological and the physical similarities to Doodle are made clear: It is alone—despite being a colonial nester— and has clearly strayed, or been blown, far from its natural environment (“Ibises”); it is a brilliant red, as Doodle was at birth, and has an awkward, ungainly body that takes on grace only in death. Doodle is the only one of the family moved enough by the bird’s demise to care about burying it, and when Doodle himself dies the following day, his body in death is described much as the bird’s, and Brother calls him “my fallen scarlet ibis” (36).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Hurst, James. The Scarlet Ibis. Hadley, Mass.: Creative Education, 1988. “The Scarlet Ibis.” Short Stories for Students. Detroit: Gale, 2006.

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The Scarlet Ibis

28 pages • 56 minutes read

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Coming of Age: Pride and Social Acceptance

World War I occurred between July 1914 and November 1918. The narrator was 13 when the war ended, and the national climate surrounding the war indirectly informed his formative years and his actions during that time. The story intertwines the narrator’s feelings of fear, pride, shame, and guilt to parallel the social atmosphere of his rural North Carolina community. By 1918, North Carolinians had served in all major battles at the Western Front, resulting in thousands of injured and killed soldiers. Although the narrator does not fully understand that the “strange names” his family discusses are battle locations, his mother’s prayers for a slain neighborhood boy situate the war within reach of the Armstrong family. The social expectations of the period shape the narrator’s reactions to his and Doodle’s “failures.”

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The Scarlet Ibis

by James Hurst

The scarlet ibis literary elements.

Southern Gothic

Setting and Context

The American South, around 1918, on a family farm near a swamp and a creek

Narrator and Point of View

The narrator is a young boy, older brother to Doodle, the disabled child that this story centers around. The majority of the story is in first-person past, since the narrator in the present is telling a story about something that happened in the past.

Tone and Mood

There is a heavy tone of guilt present throughout most of the story; the narrator feels he is to blame for Doodle's death, and since he is telling this in the present, he already knows what happened and he feels shame about it. The mood lightens at certain points in the story, such as when Doodle experiences Old Woman Swamp for the first time and learns to walk, but overall it is predominantly remorseful and guilty.

Protagonist and Antagonist

The protagonist is the narrator, Doodle's older brother, and though there is no physical antagonist, the source of conflict is Doodle's disability.

Major Conflict

The main conflict in the story is Doodle's disability. After Doodle lives when no one expected him to, the narrator must figure out how to cope with having a disabled brother who is not what he always pictured his little brother would be.

The climax of the story is the moment when Doodle learns to walk. The beginning of the story had been working up to this occasion, and what follows is the falling action that comes as a result of this climax.

Foreshadowing

The author incorporates a lot of foreshadowing into this story, which makes sense, since the narrator is telling a story about the past in the present and he already knows everything that will happen. Some of the notable instances of foreshadowing are the following:

"They named him William Armstrong, which is like tying a big tail on a small kite. Such a name sounds good only on a tombstone." "Renaming my brother was perhaps the kindest thing I ever did for him, because nobody expects much from someone called Doodle." "Dead birds is bad luck," said Aunt Nicey, poking her head from the kitchen door. "Specially red dead birds!"

Understatement

This story is full of vivid imagery, typically involving the natural world, as nature features prominently into the lives of the two brothers. The narrator paints a picture of the house they live in and the garden around it with the line, "The flower garden was strained with rotting brown magnolia petals and ironweeds grew rank amid the purple phlox." He goes on to describe their favorite place, the Old Woman Swamp, with vibrant imagery, and does the same with the scarlet ibis as it flies into the bleeding tree and eventually dies at their feet.

The narrator's pride is a paradox, because all at once it brings about both life and death. It is his pride that prompts him to teach Doodle to walk, which allows Doodle to live in a way he never has before. However, it is also this pride that makes him push Doodle past his limit, which brings his literal death. A good line that exemplifies this is "I did not know then that pride is a wonderful, terrible thing, a seed that bears two vines, life and death." It seems paradoxical that both concepts, life and death, could exist at once in a single entity, but this is the case for the narrator's pride.

Parallelism

Metonymy and synecdoche, personification.

The narrator personifies many elements of the natural world, through lines such as the following:

"The last graveyard flowers were blooming, and their smell drifted across the cotton field and through every room of our house, speaking softy the names of our dead." "I pulled the go-cart through the saw-tooth fern, down into the green dimness where the palmetto fronds whispered by the stream."

The Scarlet Ibis Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Scarlet Ibis is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

The scarlet ibis

The author uses weather as a form of foreshadowing. Storms and natural occurrences, foreshadow from the very beginning what will happen at the end. The narrator and Doodle face a huge obstacle in the way of their goal when they experience a...

Which of the following quotes from the text best reflects how the author uses nature to enhance the dark tone of the story? Answer choices for the above question A. “The last graveyard flowers were blooming, and their smell drifted across the cotton fiel

I'm sorry, you need to place your answer choices in the "details" box. Please repost your question.

The surprise was Doodle walking across the room to the table on his birthday.

At breakfast on our chosen day, when Mama, Daddy, and Aunt Nicey were in the dining room, I brought Doodle to the door in the gocart just as usual and had them turn...

Study Guide for The Scarlet Ibis

The Scarlet Ibis study guide contains a biography of James Hurst, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Scarlet Ibis
• The Scarlet Ibis Summary
• Character List

Essays for The Scarlet Ibis

The Scarlet Ibis essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst.

• Brotherly Injury: The Scarlet Ibis
• Character Comparison Essay: "The Scarlet Ibis" and "Thank You Ma'am"

Wikipedia Entries for The Scarlet Ibis

• Introduction
• James Hurst

The Scarlet Ibis

James hurst, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Brother takes pride in Doodle ’s achievements, and this sense of pride becomes a major motivation for his actions throughout “The Scarlet Ibis.” He gradually acknowledges that he only helps his brother out of a sense of pride, and that this pride leads him to behave selfishly. Other characters, such as Doodle’s parents , also find pride in Doodle’s accomplishments and hard work, spurring Doodle to work harder and harder to please his family. Hurst’s story points to both positive and negative effects that pride can have on people, but ultimately suggests that Doodle’s death was caused by the pride of those around him.

Brother sees Doodle as a reflection of himself, and therefore works hard to mitigate the sense of shame he feels about having a disabled brother. When Doodle is very young, Brother discovers that Doodle can smile and is aware of the people around him, and Brother feels relieved that he doesn’t have to live with a brother who isn’t “all there,” which he thinks would be “unbearable.” Thus, when he teaches Doodle to walk, he does so not out of a desire to improve Doodle’s life, but rather out of a desire to have a brother who is not different. Brother’s sense of pride is what initially motivates him to push Doodle to grow beyond the limitations of his disability—and, at least initially, this growth seems like a positive outcome associated with pride.

Doodle’s parents exhibit a different kind of pride from Brother. As Doodle makes progress, they express genuine pride in his accomplishments. Although they mean well, this expression of pride causes Doodle to push himself in unhealthy ways to win the love and approval of his family. The most joyful moment in the story occurs when Doodle and his brother show off that Doodle can walk, and his parents and Aunt are ecstatic that he has exceeded their expectations for him. However, this causes Brother to believe that he is “infallible,” and to push harder and harder on Doodle. Doodle follows along because he idolizes his brother and wants to continue to make his parents happy. Thus, his parent’s expression of pride in their son actually has a negative impact on him, as Hurst suggests that perhaps the catastrophe of Doodle’s death could have been avoided if they had simply been proud of their son for who he was rather than reinforcing the idea that they wanted him to be different.

Although Doodle’s thoughts go unspoken, he continues to work to make his brother proud, and Doodle’s brother in turn pushes him harder and harder. Brother describes many episodes in which Doodle collapses out of exhaustion. In the story’s final moments, after Doodle has disappointed his Brother in their swimming and rowing lesson, they wordlessly turn back to the house and Doodle continues to look at his brother, “watching for a sign of mercy.” However, instead of showing his brother compassion, Brother simply wonders, “what are the words that can solder cracked pride,” and races ahead of Doodle in the approaching storm, inadvertently dooming Doodle to death as he does so. Thus, it is not Doodle’s disability which ultimately causes his death, but rather the fact that Brother, in his pride, could not accept Doodle’s failure to be a normal boy. In this way, what began as the family’s innocent desire to help Doodle lead a more fulfilling life becomes poisoned by Brother’s pride and self-interest when he pushes Doodle past his limits. With this story, Hurst shows that even though pride can sometimes be positive, when it is borne out of selfishness it is a force of destruction.

Pride ThemeTracker

Pride Quotes in The Scarlet Ibis

It seemed so hopeless from the beginning that it's a miracle I didn't give up. But all of us must have something or someone to be proud of, and Doodle had become mine. I did not know then that pride is a wonderful, terrible thing, a seed that bears two vines, life and death.

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.

He had failed and we both knew it, so we started back home, racing the storm. We never spoke (What are the words that can solder cracked pride?), but I knew he was watching me, watching for a sign of mercy.

I screamed above the pounding storm and threw my body to the earth above his. For a long time, it seemed forever, I lay there crying, sheltering my fallen scarlet ibis from the heresy of rain.

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Personification in The Scarlet Ibis

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