Quotes In The Scarlet Ibis

There are 56.7 million people in the United States have a physical disability, that is 19 percent of the population of the whole country. Imagine each and every one of those people being hated and shamed by their family, specifically their older siblings. Older siblings are supposed to be a role model for the younger children in the family but in “The Scarlet Ibis” the narrator was a prideful, spiteful, and murderous person who held shame and hate in his heart for his invalid younger brother. The narrator was the older brother to an invalid child who could not even walk, yet the narrator hated him for what he was and felt shame that he had to associate with a kid such as his brother. The narrator was the cause of his younger brother’s death

For example Hurst writes “‘It is,” I said. “And before I’ll help you down from the loft, you’re going to have to touch it.” “I won’t touch it,” he said sullenly. “Then I’ll leave you here by yourself’’’ (353). In this quote, the narrator forces his brother to touch his own coffin. There is no legitimate reason to make anyone touch their own coffin, other to be cruel, mean, and spiteful. That was exactly what the narrator did, and if his brother would not touch it he was going to leave him there. At that point in the story Doodle did not know how to walk so he would not have been able to get down at all. The narrator is also needlessly cruel to Doodle when Hurst writes “The knowledge that Doodle’s and my plans had come to naught was bitter, and that streak of cruelty within me awakened. I ran as fast as I could, leaving him far behind with a wall of rain dividing us” (360). The narrator abandoned his brother during a vicious thunderstorm only because he wanted to retaliate against Doodle for not completing the program. Even the narrator himself said in the quote that a “streak of cruelty within me awakened” (Hurst, 360). The narrator knew that he was being cruel and proceeded with his actions, only out of spite and shame for his