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Bad Motivations In The Scarlet Ibis By James Hurst

552 Words3 Pages

Good Acts Bad Motivations In the short story, The Scarlet Ibis the author James Hurst depicts a story between two brothers one of which is a little developmentally behind. In the end, one of the brothers was killed by the other from being too overworked. Given this information, the theme is that even with good acts, the motivation behind them might not be for good reasons. This is shown through plot and character. The very first way the story shows the theme is through character. For example, Doodle's brother renamed him because of his disabilities. “Renaming my brother was perhaps the kindest thing I ever did for him because nobody expects much from someone called Doodle.” (Hurst 464) This shows how good acts have no good motivation behind …show more content…

I hadn’t run too far before I became tired, and the flood of childish spite evanesced as well. (Hurst 475) This proves even with good acts, the motivations behind them might not be for good reasons is because Doodles brother left him to teach him discipline because his plans did not work, the act of teaching him discipline is good leaving your dying brother out in a field in a rainstorm while trying to teach him discipline is not the right way. This again fits the theme of even with good acts, the motivation behind them might not be for good reasons. The third way the story shows the theme is through the plot. In the story, his brother took Doodle to the swamp every day to teach him to walk but did so for selfish reasons. His reasons were that he did not want his brother to be a reflection of himself and have him be embarrassed. After successfully teaching Doodle to walk, Brother surprised everyone by crying. “What are you crying for?” asked Daddy, but I couldn’t answer. 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” (Hurst 468) This again shows how Doodle's brother did a nice act by helping Doodle learn to walk. The reason behind it is that he is ashamed of his brother which is a bad motivation. This is exactly

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this shows how he doesn't want doodle to be his brother at all and is ashamed of him. This proves the theme because the text shown shows that the brother has a bad side of pride. this pride will bring more bad Than good to the brother as the story progresses. Which bring the bad. After a certain amount of time the brother stats to have homicidal thoughts.

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