What Is The Theme Of Control In The Scarlet Ibis

Enabling pride to take charge of life not only affects the person which pride controls, but also allows them to suffer emotionally and physically. In James Hurst’s short story, “The Scarlet Ibis” The narrator's control over his little brother, Doodle, fosters him to be pushed over the edge by his older brother, leaving Doodle suffering at the cause of the narrator’s pride. Doodle’s disability leads to the narrator becoming ashamed of him and soon, he sets out to teach him to walk because he is embarrassed that Doodle is so weak and frail. After teaching Doodle to walk, the narrator pushes Doodle to be just like everyone else by teaching Doodle to swim, run, climb, and fight. One day, while the Narrator and Doodle were eating lunch, they both

After a long day of training to go back to school, Doodle and the narrator were enjoying lunch when they both hear a squawking sound coming from the outside that led to them seeing a scarlet ibis perching upon the bleeding tree. Much like Doodle at the time, the bird looked “tired” and “sick” and just like Doodle’s movements the birds “wings were uncoordinated” leading the narrator and both their parents to watch as “Its long, graceful neck jerked twice into an S, then straightened out, and the bird was still.” (351-360). The scarlet ibis is uncoordinated, tired, sick, and awkward just like Doodle. One of the occurrences where Doodle holds similarities to the scarlet ibis was when he died because he was described as laying “very awkwardly,” with a “vermilion” neck, equivalent to the red feathers of a scarlet ibis. Another similarity includes “His little legs, bent sharply at the knees,” that “had never before seemed so fragile, so thin.” (462-465). Doodle and the scarlet ibis’s resemblance is shown through both of the suffering, with the scarlet ibis suffering from the storm pushing it from Florida to North Carolina, and Doodle, suffering because the narrator is constantly forcing him to change. While Doodle and his family are trying to figure out what type of bird the scarlet ibis is, they stumble up on the fact that the scarlet ibis originally comes from Florida. The narrator begins to think about “How many miles it had traveled to die like this, in [their] yard, beneath the bleeding tree.” The scarlet ibis travels hundreds of miles just to fall from Doodle and the narrator’s bleeding tree, just as Doodle works so