A Theme Of The Importance Of Being Nice To Your Loved
Ones In The Scarlet Ibis
This story tells the reader that all brothers can be equal, handicapped or not. “The Scarlet Ibis”,
a short story by James Hurst which was published in 1960, is a sad story about a child born with
a serious medical condition who overcomes some of his challenges only to be run to death by
his well-meaning but self-absorbed older brother. In the short story, “The Scarlet Ibis”, author
James Hurst uses foreshadowing and symbolism to convey his message, Hurst is trying to tell
the reader to be nice to their family members while they can, because before they know it,
they’ll be gone.
Hurst uses foreshadowing to convey his message. Hurst does that by foreshadowing Doodle’s
death with the scarlet ibis dying in their front yard. Doodle has just seen a scarlet ibis fly into his
family’s yard, fall down and die. He cares for it in such a way as to bury it. Then Aunt Nicey
peeks her head out of the kitchen door, and she says, “Dead birds are bad luck. ‘Specially red
dead birds!”. This is subtle foreshadowing for what will happen at the end of the story, where
Doodle dies under a tree in the middle of a thunderstorm. The bird that Doodle found has the
exact same cause of death as Doodle at the end of the story. This quote spliced in brings us full
circle back to our theme. Doodle recognizes how mean he has been to Doodle, and says this,
“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 subtle foreshadowing from our first quote brings us to our next
quote, of what was being foreshadowed. Brother is describing how Doodle has died in the midst
of a storm. Brother explains, “He lay very awkwardly, with his head thrown far back, making his
vermilion neck appear unusually long and slim. His little legs, bent sharply at the knees, had
never before seemed so fragile, so thin”. This is what was being foreshadowed in the first quote
from Aunt Nicey. Given these points, the author uses foreshadowing to convey the theme of
being nice to your loved ones before they are gone.
Moving on, author James Hurst also uses symbolism to convey the original message farther. He
does this by symbolizing a scarlet ibis when Doodle dies. Doodle and his family have just
witnessed a bird fly very wonky into their yard, fall down, and then die. In the text, Brother thinks
to himself, “A scarlet ibis! How many miles it had traveled to die like this, in our yard, beneath
the bleeding tree.” This dead bird symbolizes Doodle’s death at the end of the story before it
even happens. The bird symbolizes Doodle’s death, because both the bird and Doodle have
the same cause of death. Moving forward to when Doodle dies, the author wrote, “I began to
weep, and the tear-blurred vision in red before me looked very familiar. 'Doodle!' I screamed above the pounding storm and threw my body to the earth above his. For a long time, it seemed
forever, I lay there crying, sheltering my fallen scarlet ibis from the heresy of the rain.” Brother
thinks that the vision of Doodle lying dead on the ground looks familiar. This is because just a
little while before, Doodle and his family saw a bird die right in front of them in the same exact
way. This is another way of symbolizing Doodle’s death as if it were the scarlet ibis from earlier.
In conclusion, Hurst uses symbolism to convey the theme even further. People should be nice
to their loved ones, or before they know it, they’ll run out of time, and their loved ones will be
gone. Author James Hurst uses subtle foreshadowing with Aunt Nicey’s quote, and symbolism
of birds with Brother’s quotes to convey the entire theme. So, to wrap this essay up, James
Hurst uses the theme above to leave a good moral in our brains after reading this story. And
everything stated above tells us why.
A Theme Of The Importance Of Being Nice To Your Loved Ones In The Scarlet Ibis
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