The Scarlet Ibis Climax

Words: 879
Pages: 4

“The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst is a short story about a boy and his crippled brother, Doodle. Doodle had always been different. He didn’t begin to crawl until he was three, but his brother started to teach him things like walking and running, so they could surprise their parents. Doodle’s brother was helping him to improve his Doodle’s life but also improve his own. “The Scarlet Ibis” contains symbols, climax, and situational irony to help express the theme of the story, doing good isn’t always right if it’s for the wrong reason.

Doodle is fragile because both the scarlet ibis and Doodle are very similar. The scarlet ibis’s death was a subtle warning to the reader about what was going to happen to Doodle. One lit term from “The Scarlet
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He wasn’t doing it to help Doodle. He only did it because he was embarrassed of having a crippled brother, which is a cruel thing to do. The narrator is cruel throughout the story, but the cruelest thing that he did was leaving Doodle behind in the storm. The lit term climax is the most exciting part of the story and all the other details before this built up to create shock. The climax of “The Scarlet Ibis” is when the narrator goes back for Doodle but finds him dead in the rain. Doodle cried out for the narrator not to leave him, but he left anyway. When the narrator eventually returned he found Doodle dead in the rain and covered in blood: “He had been bleeding from the mouth, and his neck and the front of his shirt were stained a brilliant red. ‘Doodle! Doodle!’ I cried, shaking him, but there was no answer but the ropy rain.” (426) If he wasn’t so cruel and focused on making Doodle walk, his death could have been avoided. The doctor had warned before that Doodle shouldn’t get over exhausted or too excited, but that’s exactly what happened because the narrator was pushing him too hard. The author did this to show the reader that it isn’t good to be cruel. The narrator got carried away and was fixated on making Doodle “normal.” He let cruelty get the best of