illustration of a scarlet ibis cradling a boy's body

The Scarlet Ibis

by James Hurst

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What makes a strong conclusion for a commentary on "The Scarlet Ibis"?

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A strong conclusion for a commentary on "The Scarlet Ibis" should explore themes such as love, responsibility, childhood, and guilt, emphasizing how these emotions persist into adulthood. It could also focus on self-forgiveness and understanding that the narrator, as a child, could not fully grasp the consequences of his actions. Highlighting the brother's role in Doodle's brief yet fuller life, despite his tragic end, underscores the complexity of their relationship.

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The ideas of love, responsibilty, childhood and guilt would all make good concluding subjects for a piece about the short story "The Scarlet Ibis" by James Hurst . An extension theme would be to talk about how far adults can "play out" and "work through" these feelings from childhood in their own adult lives. Many people carry seemingly trivial concerns such as sibling rivalry throughout their lives and allow it to poison their lives right up until old age. A more positive idea would be to explore what is involved in self-forgiveness or self-understanding. Yes, the author may have pushed his little brother just that little bit too far, may have left his body in the rain - but the significant point to remember is that he was a child at the time not an adult. He need not have weighed up his actions using adult comparisons. Sometimes,...

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like the Ibis itself, a creature's time is just up and it's no-ones's fault.

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I imagine it took many years for the narrator to understand his own part in the life and death of his brother, Doodle, in the James Hurst short story, "The Scarlet Ibis." As a child who was not expected to live a very long life, Doodle surpassed all expectations, and his older brother should receive most of the credit. The brother pushed Doodle beyond all expectations, and through his efforts Doodle was able to enjoy some of the things a normal boy should--playing, swimming, climbing and dreaming. The narrator gave Doodle these attributes before the boy's heart gave out. That the older brother was present and first to discover the body of the blood-soaked little boy must have left him scarred and troubled. In his final moments of life, the older brother had left Doodle behind to die alone in the rain--a terrible thing to acknowledge for one so young. But as the years went by, the narrator must have come to understand that his action was a youthful mistake, and that Doodle could have never lived the life he led without his big brother close by.

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What is the climax of "The Scarlet Ibis" by James Hurst?

In "The Scarlet Ibis," the climax occurs when the disabled Doodle is running after his brother in the rain. His brother has left him behind in a rain storm. Trying to keep up with his brother in the rain, Doodle overexerted himself. He dies from sheer exhaustion.

When his body falls back, limp, the reader realizes that Doodle has died. His brother has to live with the guilt because he caused Doodle to overexert himself. The older brother does not want to have an invalid brother, so he pushes Doodle to exert himself beyond what Doodle is capable of handling.

When Brother picks up Doodle's drooping head, and Doodle's body becomes limp, Brother realizes that Doodle has died because Brother was too proud to have an invalid brother. He was ashamed of Doodle and now that Doodle is dead, Brother weeps.

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"The Scarlet Ibis" is a short story about two brothers, narrated retrospectively by the older brother. At the beginning of the story, the older brother is seven years old when the younger brother, who the older brother calls Doodle, is born. Doodle seems to be born with some kind of malformation or disability. He is born "with a tiny body that (is) red and shrivelled like an old man's," and everyone assumes that he will soon die. Doodle survives, but he is weaker than an average child.

The story then jumps ahead five years. The older brother recounts how he felt "embarrassed" by having a five-year-old brother who still could not walk. The older brother thus, against everybody's expectations, teaches Doodle to walk. After this success, he then decides to teach Doodle "to run, to row, to swim, to climb trees, and to fight," all by the time Doodle starts school.

The older brother becomes frustrated when Doodle is unable to master all of these additional skills, and the climax of the story is born out of this frustration. Doodle and his older brother find themselves outside in a storm. Doodle becomes frightened, slips, and falls to the ground. His brother realizes in this moment that Doodle will never "be like the other boys at school." This realization awakens a "streak of cruelty" in him, and he runs away and leaves his younger brother behind him, crying and frightened.

At the climax of the story, the older brother returns to find Doodle. He finds Doodle "sitting on the ground, his face buried in his arms." When he tries to lift him up, Doodle "topple(s) backward onto the earth." The older brother notices that Doodle is "bleeding from the mouth" and that the front of his shirt is "stained a brilliant red." The older brother starts screaming, but Doodle makes no response. The implication is that Doodle is dead.

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I have had to edit your question down to just one question according to enotes regulations. The climax to this memorable tale comes significantly after the family discovers the dead scarlet ibis in their yard which impacts Doodle so greatly. It is key to realise how Hurst uses this incident to foreshadow what is about to happen. After Doodle has buried the ibis, he and his brother go to continue their training to prepare Doodle for school. As the narrator and Doodle have to cope with their awareness of failure in preparing Doodle physically to be like the other boys, Doodle waits for a consoling word from his brother, but as the storm breaks, the narrator, overwhelmed by his own shame and sense of spite, runs away, leaving Doodle:

He had failed and we both knew it, so we started back home, racing the storm. We never spoke (what are the words that can solder cracked pride?), but I knew he was watching me, watching for a sign of mercy. The lightning was near now, and from fear he walked so close behind me he kept stepping on my heels. The fast i walked, the faster he walked, so I began to run.... When the deafening peal of thunder had died, and in the moment before the rain arrived, I heard Doodle, who had fallen behind, cry out, "Brother, Brother, don't leave me! Don't leave me!"

In spite of this plea, the narrator's "streak of cruelty" is awakened through his failure to train Doodle, and so he runs away. It is this break in their fraternal relationship that is the climax of the story, because the narrator has to also face his own pride and guilt in wanting to make Doodle something he is not. After this, the narrator returns down the path to find his "scarlet ibis" dead, huddled under a bush.

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How do I summarize the ending of "The Scarlet Ibis"?

The final summer of Doodle's life he and his brother were working on making Doodle as "normal" as possible. Doodle's brother forced Doodle to physically push his little broken body to the limit and beyond. Doodle only did it because he wanted his brother to love him, he didn't care about being "normal", he didn't think there was anything wrong with him the way he was and he didn't care what others thought.

On the final day of Doodle's life he and his brother took their little skiff (boat) out right before a big storm rolled in. Once the storm hit, Doodle's brother was shouting at him to reach his goal for the lesson. When they reached the shore they both knew that Doodle had not reached the goal. Doodle and his brother begin to walk home, but all of a sudden his brother begins to run leaving an incredibly exhausted Doodle behind. Doodle called out to his brother, but his brother, hearing him, continued to put distance between the two. He begins to feel guilty and goes back to get Doodle only to find that he has died. A large tree branch which was struck by lightning had fallen and crushed him. Doodle's brother feel terribly guilty and ashamed for how he treated his brother and he reflects that Doodle looks like the scarlet ibis that had died in their yard earlier that year. He looked broken like the bird and he was out of place in life like the bird.

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