Pride in the Scarlet Ibis

Being normal would just mean being “perfect,” and nobody is perfect. The short story “The Scarlet Ibis” written by James Hurst shows that Doodles brother, the narrator whose name we never learn, has his expectations of normal that he thinks that Doodle doesn’t live up to. This short story shows that having too much pride can hurt those that people care about.

When Doodle is born, the joy of new birth is short-lived because Doodle has a handicap discovered. The doctors say that he is physically disabled, and possibly paralyzed for life. That possibility doesn’t matter now because the doctors say that he only has a few months to live. The narrator then decides to try to make Doodle to live up to his standards of “normal.” The narrator says, “I was so embarrassed at having a brother at that age who couldn’t walk, so I set out to teach him” (346). In this, the narrator decides to work with Doodle to teach him to walk out of his own embarrassment. This leads to Doodle and him pushing higher and higher, only to fall harder. This shows that too much pride hurts those one cares about.

When the narrator and Doodle show to the family that Doodle can walk, they all get overjoyed and they celebrate that Doodle can do normal things. When the narrator gets hugged by the family for teaching Doodle how to walk, the narrator says, “They did not know that I did it for myself; that pride…” (347). He says this because he wanted a brother that he did not have to pull around because he had to pull him everywhere he went before. He helped Doodle because he was ashamed of him. He and Doodle then get so high, they decide to teach Doodle to do harder thing before school starts, and that is when the main trouble starts. They then try, and fail and because of that, the narrator gets his pride hurt very much.

The end of this story is when Doodle and the narrator are rowing in a boat, and a huge storm comes. Then they go back to shore, and realize that they have failed in their goal. This makes the narrator very angry, so he leaves Doodle behind in the storm with the rain coming down hard. The narrator says, “And that streak of cruelty awakened, I ran as fast as I could, leaving him far behind” (353). This shows that the narrator has his pride hurt and he takes it out on Doodle, and that ends up killing him. The narrator didn’t mean to kill Doodle by running away; he just wanted to be away from everything else that was bothering him. This ended up hurting the ones the narrator cares about. Also, by killing Doodle, he hurts his family because they thought that Doodle could start at living a normal life, but then he moves on.