The Scarlet Ibis By David Hurst: Literary Analysis

The Past, Present, and Future Over the last year in Literature/Writing, I have grown significantly as a writer due to my discovered ability to create concise and connected thesis statements, despite that, I still struggle with commentary that pulls out “juicy” words from a quote and deeply analyzes them. First and foremost, one skill I have developed over the course of this school year has been my ability to generate concise and connected thesis statements that deliver my argument and position within the span of one sentence. At the start of the school year, we were asked to write a literary analysis for a short story called ‘The Scarlet Ibis’ by David Hurst. After taking a look at my old analysis, I can identify my claim as “In the short story, “The Scarlet

I did not expand enough on my topic for readers to understand my argument in a complete sense, and I simply was arguing that cruelty takes place, instead of explaining how it affects the story, and everyday life. On top of that, me saying “it can lead to death, injury, and other consequences” only further hindered the reader’s ability to acknowledge my side of the argument. Having said that, it is identifiable that there was a massive shift throughout the school year, specifically in my ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Summative In-Class Essay. This essay asked students to provide their perspective on who was most responsible for the tragic ending of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ by the renowned author, William Shakespeare. For this essay I wrote the following claim: “While it is easy to assign blame to Friar Lawrence for his part in the tragic ending of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the character most responsible for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet in William Shakespeare’s play is in fact Juliet due to her obsessive behavior and overly sacrificial tendencies,” (2). After thoroughly comparing the two claims, multiple differences surface