The Scarlet Ibis Literary Analysis

In the short story “The Scarlet Ibis” written by novelist James Hurst, is a story about two brothers. Told in first person point of view. The narrator is the older brother of Doodle and is referred to as “Brother”. Doodle is a weak and sickly child who wasn’t supposed to survive much longer after birth. Doodle’s illness brought such an inconvenience to Brother’s ego that his selfish personality was revealed. The major conflict Brother faces is egocentric, wanton and completely sightless to his actions, and due to that he loses one of the most important things in his life.
When Doodle is born, like any older sibling Brother was overjoyed. Little did he know that his pectations were about to be shut down. In Doodles situation Brother and the family are told he won’t survive, so they prepared for the worst. But Doodle overcame the odds and survived past birth. In fact he even made it to 6 years old. But he wasn’t any average 6 year old he was in Brothers opinion “...Invalid…” and dealing with “...having one who was possibly not all there was unbearable…” so Brother “...Began to make plans to kill him by smothering him with a pillow.” Brothers expectations of having a brother weren’t met by any means and his innocent Proud and egotistical personality …show more content…
Brother wanted to fix his invalid brother and to do so he created a training course that was more like a military boot camp. Doodle was frightened and weak “Don’t leave me brother.” Doodle needed his brother for many things and Brother was so set on fixing him he didn't see what he was doing was hurting doodle. Although helping doodle came from a good place he had to have known that what he was doing wasn’t fully right because he kept it from his parents and took advantage of the fact that doodle thought what he was going through was for the best instead not to just help brother in his selfish