to the first conflict, which is internal, it is apparently from the beginning that the narrator has mixed feelings towards his disabled younger brother. On the one hand, Doodle is a source of embarrassment and frustration; on the other hand, he is the only sibling the narrator has, and he finds himself wishing that their relationship could be different. There is a conflict between the brother he has and the brother he wants.

The second (external) conflict is the one that ultimately leads to Doodle's death. It is the conflict that sees the narrator reminisce about the cruelty that he showed his brother, going so far as to make him touch the casket that had been prematurely made for him. It is the same conflict that leads the narrator to leave Doodle behind in a storm with the ludicrous idea of testing his stamina. Given that Doodle dies in this incident, it is evident that the ongoing conflict between the two brothers led directly to Doodle's death.

One conflict that runs throughout the story deals with Brother's pride. Brother admits that he is ashamed of his brother because Doodle can't do what Brother thinks that all little brothers should be able to do.

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.

Brother admits a few paragraphs before the above quote that he didn't know it was pride that motivated him, nor did he understand that pride can be both helpful and hurtful. While Brother might not understand that his motivation is pride, he clearly wrestles with those feelings of disappointment. This motivates Brother to push Doodle quite hard in learning to walk, run, play, etc. This struggle between what Doodle can do and can't do is a conflict for both Brother and Doodle. Brother has to wrestle with how to teach Doodle, and Brother has to figure out how to be patient and motivating for both of them. Anybody who has ever coached understands this conflict.

For Doodle, there is an inner conflict within him that deals with never wanting to disappoint his older brother. Doodle is physically limited, but he appears to be intelligent and insightful. He knows that he has physical limitations, but he doesn't want his brother to see him for those limits. Another conflict within Doodle is his fear of being left alone. There are two times in the story that Doodle cries out "Don't leave me." He's terrified of being alone, and it's heartbreaking to watch Brother manipulate that fear.

“Then I’ll leave you here by yourself,” I threatened, and made as if I were going down.

Doodle was frightened of being left. “Don’t leave me, Brother,” he cried, and leaned toward the coffin.

The two different conflicts in the story "The Scarlet Ibis" by James Hurst are:

a) Man against Man

b) Man against Himself

a) Concerning the first conflict, Man against Man, “The Scarlet Ibis” deals with the older brother and his conflict with his younger brother, Doodle. The conflict here is that Doodle is a bit of “a disappointment” to the family and certainly to the older brother. He does not like that his brother may not have the mental faculties and physical strength that he has, or that other less-challenged people have.

In addition, this older brother harbors resentment, somewhat, because Doodle, as espoused by the mother, may never be able to have boxing matches with him. Moreover, he may never be able to sit atop with him “in the top fork of the great pine behind the barn…”

Essentially the conflict is that this brother wants Doodle to be able to effortlessly do what the brothers of other people he knows can do. Doodle cannot; the older brother cannot really accept Doodle’s imitations. So this is the conflict of the older brother against Doodle.

b) Regarding Man against Himself, Doodle is in conflict with his limitations. He wants to be what the society around him calls ‘normal.’ Doodle wants to please his brother and enjoy life with him uninhibitedly, seizing the day with his brother, to borrow a famous saying. He wants to please his brother despite the mental and physical challenges he must battle with daily.

This is really evidenced toward the climax of “The Scarlet Ibis” when he cannot keep up with the older brother who is running away from him. This leads to his (Doodle’s) death and this is the ultimate price he pays in this battle against himself.

Furthermore, you can also say that a third conflict in this short story is the conflict both characters have - Man against Nature, or Man against his physical environment. Both are battling the deluge of rain that batters them as they struggle to get home.

The narrator first struggles as a child and older brother with the fact that the disabled Doodle is not the brother he would have liked to have had. As he puts it early in the story:

Doodle was born when I was seven and was, from the start, a disappointment. He seemed all head, with a tiny body that was red and shriveled like an old man's.

Doodle does not die as expected by his family, but he is disabled and at five has not learned to walk:

I was embarrassed at having a brother of that age who couldn't walk, so I set out to teach him.

The narrator struggles between wanting to help and care for his younger brother—doing such kind acts as teaching him to walk—and what he calls his streak of cruelty in wanting to treat this dependent and disappointing boy badly. This leads him to show Doodle his coffin and to leave Doodle behind in the rainstorm.

The narrator is also conflicted by the guilt he feels over Doodle's death: was it his fault or inevitable? While his narrative makes it seems likely that Doodle's disability might have killed him anyway, the narrator still struggles with feeling responsible for his brother's death.

Central to the conflicts in "The Scarlet Ibis" is the brother's/narrator's "knot of cruelty borne by the stream of love."

It would seem that the brother tells the story as an expiation for his guilt over the death of Doodle, and, perhaps, as a warning to others to not try to remake people. It is the hubris of the brother, his attempts to remake Doodle, that is central to his and Doodle's conflicts. For instance, when his frail brother becomes able to walk, the narrator admits that "Doodle walked only because I was ashamed of having a crippled brother." Throughout his narrative, the brother admits that his pride, to which he was a "slave," "spoke...louder" to him than all the family members' voices. Indeed, this selfish pride is the driving force for his internal conflicts and many of the external conflicts.

From the beginning, the brother struggles with many internal conflicts. He is ashamed of Doodle: "It was bad enough having an invalid brother, but having one who possibly was not all there was unbearable, so I began to make plans to kill him with a pillow." This early conflict about Doodle's mental faculties is, fortunately, resolved when the baby Doodle smiles at the brother. However, the brother/narrator soon feels that Doodle "was a burden in many ways." So, he struggles with Doodle in external conflicts, trying to force him in different ways to become physically normal. This struggle causes Doodle to have inner conflicts as he tries to measure up to his big brother's expectations. Later, the brother causes an external conflict as he forces Doodle to "swim until he turned blue and row until he couldn't lift an oar." Until the end, the narrator/brother struggles internally with his selfishness and pride that eventually cause the death of Doodle.

It becomes apparent that Doodle's conflicts are brought about mainly because of his brother's demands upon him and his wish for his brother's love and approval. Thus, his conflicts arise from his struggles to make his body perform so that his brother will accept him as normal. Doodle's death is caused by his inner fears of not being loved and approved of and his anxiety about being left behind by his brother. His final struggle is both internal and external. Doodle struggles externally against the rain as he runs to catch his brother because of his fear of being left behind. Sadly, his weak heart fails him.

I believe that Doodle can be used to illustrate both internal and external conflicts.  Externally, Doodle struggles with regular every day activities and life itself.  He is frail, and all throughout his life, his family is more or less expecting him to die.  They have moments of joy.  For example, the family is ecstatic when they learn that Brother has taught Doodle to walk, but even Doodle himself knows that he isn't quite capable of keeping up with everybody else.  The simple act of moving from point A to B is a huge struggle for Doodle.  That's why he is so concerned with being left alone.  He says "Don't leave me" a total of four times in the story.  

Physically, Doodle struggles to keep up with everybody, and I believe he struggles with that internally too.  He wants to do everything that Brother does.  He desperately wants to keep up with his older brother, but he knows that he is limited.  When Doodle was learning to walk, it took weeks and weeks to accomplish a few steps.  There had to be moments when Doodle simply wanted to give up.  If that is too much of a hypothetical for an internal conflict, then Brother is a good character to use.  He openly admits that he struggles with his pride.  He's embarrassed that he has a brother that can't walk, so Brother decides that he will teach Doodle; however, he knows that his motivations are selfish.  There's also a sense that Brother struggles with feelings of guilt over how he treated Doodle.   

The internal conflict in the story comes from our narrator, Doodle's brother. He struggles with guilt over how he treated his disabled brother. He feels bad for playing mean jokes on him and for pushing him beyond his limits. The guilt especially plagues him when he recalls how unconditionally Doodle loved him no matter what he did to him. Doodle is grateful when his brother saves him from drowning, not even realizing that it was his brother who pushed him in.

The external conflict is best seen through what Doodle faces in the world. He is disabled and he must battle to be normal and he must battle to win over the heart of his older brother. Doodle pushes his body to the limit just to please his brother. He cares nothing for being "normal" only for being loved (which could also be an internal conflict). He deals with being outwardly rejected by the world, although he seems not to mind.

    In the James Hurst short story, "The Scarlet Ibis," Doodle and his family discover the identity and the ultimate migratory limits of the "great big red bird" that has died in their yard from a book about birds that the family has on hand.

... we stood around it, awed by its exotic beauty.    "It's dead," Mama said.    "What is it?" Doodle repeated.    "Go bring me the big bird book," said Daddy. 

The book identifies it as a scarlet ibis and it's range of migration--"from South America to Florida. A storm must have brought it here." (Although not specifically identified, the setting of the story is probably coastal North Carolina, where author James Hurst grew up.) As an external conflict device, the book simply serves as proof as to why the bird has appeared and then fallen from the tree. It also explains why none of the family has seen one before and perhaps magnifies Aunt Nicey's prediction that "Dead birds is bad luck... 'specially red, dead birds!" In any case, Doodle has discovered a sad kinship with the bird that should never have made it so far north.