two unlike things in order to make a strong point. In the above passage, the little brother's full name is compared to a large kite tail. The kite itself could represent how small Doodle's body is. The kite could also represent Doodle's predictably short life and the fact that his name has a longer life-expectancy than he does. The imagery, simile, and implied message of this sentence is quite powerful.

The next example provides a look at an oxymoron and a metaphor as follows:

I did not know then that pride is a wonderful, terrible thing, a seed that bears two vines, life and death.

First, two contrasting words describe the word "pride": wonderful and terrible. The juxtaposition of two opposing words often creates oxymorons that help the reader understand the internal conflict a character is experiencing. Pride is then compared to "a seed that bears two vines," which creates another comparison called a metaphor. Simply take out the preceding clause and the sentence creates a metaphor that would read as follows: "pride is a seed that bears two vines." 

Finally, there is an allusion to the tale of Hansel and Gretel:

It was too late to turn back, for we had both wandered too far into a net of expectations and had left no crumbs behind.

When an author refers to a story that readers are likely to recognize, an allusion is created that draws upon past experience. As a result, a meaningful connection between the two stories or characters deepens the understanding of how the story is read.

The following are some examples of figurative language used in "The Scarlet Ibis":

Simile:

Simile involves the comparison of two things that are essentially different. In “The Scarlet Ibis”, in the first paragraph, the writer, James Hurst, uses this type of figurative language. He writes that:

…but the oriole nest in the elm was untenanted and rocked back and forth like an empty cradle.

The author is using simile to show that the empty oriole nest, although rustically made of twigs, paper, and such, is akin to (in its present state) an empty cradle. Simile here conveys the message of emptiness as concerns fragile birds and their nests and fragile babies and their cradles.

Metaphor:

Metaphor involves comparing people, places and/or things that are unalike. This is shown quite clearly in the last paragraph of “The Scarlet Ibis” when the brother falls on the dead younger brother (Doodle) and relates that:

I lay there crying, sheltering my fallen scarlet ibis from the heresy of rain.

In this passage, the boy Doodle is compared to the fiery red bird the scarlet ibis. Doodle has bled to death. His body violently broke down as he tried to run with all his heart to keep up with his brother who chose to run away from him.

Hyperbole

Hyperbole is when a writer uses exaggeration as a literary tool. This exaggeration is meant to convey deep feelings. A writer uses hyperbole to make a point in a more dramatic way. In “The Scarlet Ibis”, hyperbole is evident in this line:

There is within me (and with sadness I have watched it in others) a knot of cruelty borne by the stream of love...

Here, Hurst does not simply write that we can be mean to those we love. He uses the above line to show this sentiment more intensely, with the heightened language employed. This hyperbole allows the reader to really understand what Doodle’s brother is feeling.

When you're looking for figurative language, you're usually searching for it in a poem. The author of the short story "The Scarlet Ibis" does use such literary devices as personification, symbolism, simile, and foreshadowing to tell the story of Doodle and his brother.

Let me give you a few examples:

personification: In the very first sentence, the seasons are personified, given human characteristics, with summer being dead and autumn not yet born.

simile: When his brother tries to teach him to walk, Doodle collapses "on to the grass like a half-empty flour sack." When Doodle manages to stand alone for a few seconds, the brothers' laughter rang "through the swamp like a bell."

symbolism: The scarlet ibis comes to symbolize Doodle. Just as the bird flew many miles just to fall at their feet dead, so also Doodle accomplished what many thought was impossible by learning to walk, only to die when he couldn't keep up with his brother.

foreshadowing: The fate of the scarlet ibis foreshadows Doodle's fate.

James Hurst uses imagery and metaphors to create visual impressions that connect humans to the natural world. These impressions frequently support the symbolism of the scarlet ibis to stand for Doodle.

The color red figures prominently in many of the images and comparisons, and it becomes especially strong in relation to Doodle’s death. Similarly, the author uses the bird as a symbol of Doodle, and in the narrator’s description of his brother’s body, their similarity is emphasized. In the end, he specifically refers to his dead brother as the ibis.

Earlier in the story, the bird’s incongruous appearance and its death serve to foreshadow Doodle’s demise. A related image that evokes the color red and the deaths to come is that of the “bleeding tree” in which the ibis perches. The entire first paragraph includes numerous mentions of death in relation to different natural phenomena. The narrator also uses personification: “summer was dead." He mentions “graveyard flowers” and uses personification in saying that they were “speaking the names of our dead.” Further comparisons with the natural world, evoking life as well as death, apply to the narrator’s analysis of emotion as he considers the role of pride, which he calls “a wonderful, terrible thing, a seed that bears two vines, life and death.”

Because the narrator is remembering his childhood, he often uses figurative language appropriate to a child. Much of this is simile. He describes the curtains as “rustling like palmetto fronds.” In a simile combined with synesthesia (the mixing or combining of senses), he mentions hearing a smell and evokes death through mourning: “the sick-sweet smell of bay flowers hung everywhere like a mournful song.” When Doodle cannot walk when the narrator teaches him, he collapses “like an empty flour sack.” The narrator also compares his optimism to another red bird: “Hope…perched like a cardinal in the lacy toothbrush tree.” This is also an allusion to an Emily Dickinson poem that begins, “Hope is the thing with feathers.”

The author uses figurative language to characterize Doodle.

Figurative language is non-literal description. That means it does not describe something as it is, but in comparison to something else. The most common types of figurative language are similes and metaphors. Writers like to use figurative language to add depth and interest to a story, including characterizing (describing) important characters.

A simile is an indirect comparison, where the author is saying that something is like something else. An example from the story is the description of Doodle’s name.

They named him William Armstrong, which is like tying a big tail on a small kite. Such a name sounds good only on a tombstone.

It means that name is too big for him. The author could have just said the name seemed foolish because Doodle was so tiny and the name seemed serious and grown-up, but the author makes the point, instead, with this wonderful comparison of tying a big tail on a small kite. We imagine it, and it helps us picture Doodle.

A metaphor is another type of figurative language, when you say one thing but mean something else. Here is the narrator’s description of what he hoped for when Doodle was born.

… I wanted more than anything else someone to race to Horsehead Landing, someone to box with, and someone to perch with in the top fork of the great pine behind the barn, where across the fields and swamps you could see the sea. I wanted a brother.

When the narrator says he wanted a brother, he means it metaphorically and not literally. He means that he wants someone to do all of these things with. He wants a friend.  Doodle is too weak and small to be able to do these things, so while he is literally the narrator’s brother, he is not metaphorically. He does not live up to the image that the narrator had of what a brother should be able to do.

Figurative language is like helping the reader see what is in the author’s mind. It makes a story richer, and makes details of characterization and setting clearer. In this story, we see how the similes and metaphors describe Doodle in a much more complex way than just saying he was small and could not do much.

James Hurst's "The Scarlet Ibis" contains many different metaphors. We encounter this form of figurative language in the very first sentence, when Hurst writes:

It was in the clove of seasons, summer was dead but autumn had not yet been born, that the ibis lit in the bleeding tree.

Here, the narrator is metaphorically treating the seasons not just as markers of time which pass through the natural world, but as things which are born and which die, almost in a human capacity. The "clove"--which in its literal use is a dried red flower bud--is a metaphor for being a late bloomer (as we will soon learn Doodle is) and an examination of the divide between two time periods.

When the narrator speaks of his relationship with Doodle, he comments:

There is within me (and with sadness I have watched it in others) a knot of cruelty borne by the stream love...

The narrator is comparing love to a stream (a body of water which flows through a landscape), suggesting that love is an organic part of being human; at the same time, he is also viewing his tendency toward unkindness as a knot (the tangling of something), which is also part of nature. Both capabilities--love and cruelty--exist intrinsically within the narrator. 

The narrator goes on to say:

I did not know then that pride is a wonderful, terrible thing, a seed that bears two vines, life and death.

Again, we encounter a metaphorical examination of a human quality as a component of the natural world. In this case, pride is a seed which yields (in an echoing of the open passage) both life and death as growing extensions of it.

Of course, the controlling metaphor of James Hurst's short story is the beautiful red bird named in the title, "The Scarlet Ibis"; this bird becomes a metaphor, an unstated comparison for Doodle, whose nickname is also a metaphor as the brother has donned him after the doodlebug that walks backwards because as a baby he crawled that direction.

Here are three other metaphors employed by Hurst.

• In the second paragraph, the brother narrates that a grindstone now stands where the bleeding tree in which the ibis had landed once was, replaced now with an elm. If an oriole lands there momentarily with a song, "its song seems to die up in the leaves, a silvery dust."  This is a metaphor as "song" is compared to "silvery dust."
• In the ninth paragraph, "He was a burden in many ways." This is an expressed metaphor as Doodle = a burden.
• In the thirtieth paragraph, the brother tries to teach Doodle to walk because he is embarrassed that his brother cannot do this. He realizes that now at this point Doodle has become someone he must make worthy of his pride. 

I did not know then that pride is a wonderful, terrible thing, a seed that bears two vines, life and death. 

This metaphor, too, is expressed one as pride is equated to the seed; another metaphor is that [it] bears two vines, life and death. Life and death are compared to two vines.

    The narrator's little brother, Doodle, receives several complimentary comparisons in the James Hurst short story, "The Scarlet Ibis." Three different examples of metaphorical useage (the comparison of two unlike things without using the words "like" or "as") are listed below.
    The big brother compares himself to a slave in his desire to help Doodle learn to walk:

    ... that pride, whose slave I was, spoke to me louder than all their voices... 

Later, the final storm's elements are compared to a child's game--of hide-and-go-seek, perhaps?

... lightning was playing across half the sky and thunder roared out, hiding even the sound of the sea. 

In the story's final line, the dead Doodle is compared with the fallen ibis, and the rainstorm is likened to an irreligious act.

For a long time, it seemed forever, I lay there crying, sheltering my fallen scarlet ibis from the heresy of rain.

A simile is a comparison using the words "like" or "as." Hurst uses many of these in "The Scarlet Ibis." A few of them are listed below.

The very young Doodle, struggling for mobility, would "collapse back onto the bed like an old worn-out doll."

A favorite haunt of Doodle and the narrator is Old Woman Swamp. On the day that the narrator decides Doodle will learn to walk, the two are sitting by the swamp, where "the sick- sweet smell of bay flowers hung everywhere like a mournful song."

The narrator describes Doodle's struggles to stand and walk as follows: "He collapsed onto the grass like a half-empty flour sack."

In contrast to the mournful smell of the bay flowers, when it becomes clear that Doodle can learn to walk, "our laughter pealing through the swamp like a ringing bell."

Two lines later, Hurst uses another simile, comparing the abstract concept of hope to a bird in a tree: "Hope no longer hid in the dark palmetto thicket but perched like a cardinal in the lacy toothbrush tree, brilliantly visible."

When the narrator is about to show off Doodle's walking to the family, he thinks: "Keeping a nice secret is very hard to do, like holding your breath."

Hurst's use of similes helps develop the narrator's distinctive voice and helps the reader to develop a sensory picture of what is going in the story that adds to its emotional impact.

There are many of figures of speech like similes and metaphors in "The Scarlet Ibis."  Here is a list of some of them.  I've bolded the similes, but have also included metaphors used by Hurst in the story.

• "It was in the clove of seasons . . ." (metaphor)
•  ". . . the oriole nest in the elm was untenanted and rocked back and forth like an empty cradle."
• "They named him William Armstrong, which is like tying a big tail on a small kite."
• "Crawling backward made him look like a doodlebug."
• "I did not know then that pride is a wonderful, terrible thing, a seed that bears two vines, life and death. (metaphor)
• . . . the peacock spread his magnificent tail, enfolding the boy gently like a closing go-to-sleep flower."
• "Promise hung about us like the leaves . . ."
• "Even death did not mar its grace, for it lay on the earth like a broken vase of red flowers."

I hope this helps!  Hurst's imagery in "The Scarlet Ibis" shows his wonderful ability to paint a picture for the reader by using figures of speech like similes and metaphors.  

Remember that a simile is a form of literary comparison where one object is compared to another object using the word "like" or "as". Normally the two objects are dissimilar - we would not normally think of associating or linking them, but the author normally makes a point or forces us to see the object they are describing in a new and surprising way because of the comparison.

Looking at "The Scarlet Ibis", therefore, there are some great examples of similes. To me, one of the most important in the text is the description of the dead Scarlet Ibis after it has just fallen from the tree:

Even death did not mar its grace, for it lay on the earth like a broken vase of red flowers, and we stood around it, awed by its exotic beauty.

Here the dead scarlet ibis is compared to a broken vase of red flowers. Note how this reflects both its fragile, broken state as a dead bird, but it also conveys its incredible beauty - it is compared to red flowers, even though they are in a broken vase.

What is key to realise, however, is how the mention of red links the scarlet ibis to Doodle. Remember the simile that is used to describe him at birth:

He seemed all head, with a tiny body which was red and shrivelled like an old man's.

Here of course the comparison is less than flattering, emphasising as it does the unnatural appearance of Doodle, but it serves to link the character of Doodle with the scarlet ibis - a comparison that becomes very important at the end of the novel.

So, there are two important similes for you from this excellent story. Have a go and looking back at it and finding some more now. Good luck!

Metaphors compare unlike things without using the words "like" or "as," such as saying summer was dead or that the narrator had a knot of cruelty in him.

A metaphor is a comparison between two unlike things.  Metaphors are a type of figurative language that are used to add description to writing.  They might be used to describe the setting or characterize.  An example of a metaphor follows:

It was in the clove of seasons, summer was dead but autumn had not yet been born, that the ibis lit in the bleeding tree.

This is a metaphor because, of course, summer is not alive, and therefore cannot die.  It is also personification, because it describes summer and autumn as if they were human. This sets the tone while also giving important symbolic information for the story and telling you details of the setting.  The ibis, which is mentioned in this first sentence, is a symbol of fragility to which the narrator compares his brother. 

Metaphor contrasts with simile, which is another type of comparison that uses “like” or “as” in the comparison.  Consider the description of Doodle trying to learn to crawl.

Trembling, he'd push himself up, turning first red, then a soft purple, and finally collapse back onto the bed like an old worn-out doll.

Notice that this is different from a metaphor because it does not say that Doodle is a worn-out doll, it says that he is like a worn-out doll.  Similes are still useful figurative language in that they also add detail and help the reader create pictures in his or her mind.

Although the story is full of simile, there are also other metaphors.

There is within me (and with sadness I have watched it in others) a knot of cruelty borne by the stream of love, much as our blood sometimes bears the seed of our destruction, and at times I was mean to Doodle.

This metaphor is used to compare the narrator’s feelings with a knot.  It is a powerful metaphor which can be used to characterize him, because it demonstrates his guilt over how he treated his brother and also his reflective nature.  Of course, it also shows that he does not have the tendency to be cruel to his brother. He admits it.  The narrator admits that he wanted his brother to be like other kids, grew frustrated with him, and pushed him too hard.

This story is full of imagery and figurative language.  These descriptions create a tone, add detail, and characterize the narrator and Doodle or describing the setting.  Authors use these elements to make their stories richer and help the reader see what they are seeing.

It seems like you need examples of how the author employs certain literary terms, or elements, in the story.  Included are examples of irony, symbolism, and foreshadowing.

Irony is in the baby's name, William Armstrong, which ironically is a big and 'strong' name for someone who appears so weak and fragile. The family decides to call the baby Doodle for short, a name which seems much more fitting.

Symbolism is in the form of the lost scarlet ibis, the bird which lands on their property and seems to be withering and dying away.  Like Doodle at birth, the bird is red in color and seems weak and fragile.

Foreshadowing is also apparent in the scarlet ibis. It gives in to its weakness and ends up dying, foreshadowing Doodle's untimely death later on in the story.

The first passages of the story are FILLED with figurative language!  "Summer was dead" is an example of a metaphor, and "the oriole nest in the elem was unenanted and rocked back and forth like an empty cradle"  is an example of a simile.  Both give off the sense of death in their imagery and foreshadow later events. This is further developed in the final sentence of the opening paragraph, which states, "The last graveyard flowers were blooming, and their smell drifted across the cotton field and through every room of our house, speaking softly the names of our dead".  This adds to the foreshadowing and the death imagery, and is also an example of personification in.