Pride And Death In The Scarlet Ibis Literary Analysis

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Pride and Death in The Scarlet Ibis “I did not know then that pride is a wonderful, terrible thing, a seed that bears two vines, life and death” (2) says the narrator as he recounts memories of his brother Doodle. Pride can be a good thing when you don’t have too much of it, but if you become too confident, things can go downhill. James Hurst wrote the short story, The Scarlet Ibis to show how too much pride can have tragic consequences. The narrator, Doodle’s older brother, has mixed feelings for Doodle, because at times he is very kind and helpful, but he can also be really mean. Pride can be a positive feeling because if you show a lot of pride, people will look up to you. Pride can also result in people being helpful to one another. The narrator says “I began to believe in my own infallibility, and I prepared a terrific development program for him.” (4). This means that the narrator really …show more content…
The narrator states, “They did not know that I did it for myself. Doodle walked because I was ashamed of having a crippled brother” (3). This shows that because he had so much pride, he is embarrassed of having a disabled brother. He was mean to him sometimes and it made Doodle really sad. The narrator also said, “Renaming my brother was the best thing I even did for him because no one expects much from someone called Doodle” (2). This quote shows how upset the narrator was because he had a disabled brother. He thought that the name Doodle was a stupid name and that someone named that would not be able to do much. The narrator had a lot of pride, which was both good and bad. The good part was that because of his pride, he was able to help Doodle learn new everyday skills and not give up. The bad part was that because he had too much pride, it also lead him to do some terrible and cruel thing to Doodle that lead to the death of Doodle. If anything is taken out of this story, it is to be kind, helpful, and