Pride In The Scarlet Ibis

Pride and Death in The Scarlet Ibis The narrator states as he remembers his little brother, Doodle, “I did not know then that pride is a wonderful, terrible thing, a seed that bears two vines, life and death,” (3). In the short story, “The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst shows how pride can cause happiness and disasters. The narrator is caring to Doodle, but also cruel to him as well. The narrator takes care of his disabled brother and is determined to help him. In the short story, “The Scarlet Ibis” it states, “I skipped through the rooms down the echoing halls, shouting, Mama, he smiled. He’s all there! He’s all there!” and there he was,” (1). This tells the reader that the narrator was happy to see that his brother was okay. This
In the short story, “The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst, it states, “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 by smothering him with a pillow,” (1). In other words, he was self-centered and didn’t care about helping his brother. The only thing he cared about was someone to play with. “One day I took him up to the barn loft and showed him his casket, telling him how we all had believed he would die,” the narrator said on page 2. This tells the reader that he didn’t care about his brother’s feelings, when he made his brother go look and touch his own coffin. Doodle was so scared that he got paralyzed, because his heartbeat sped up too much. The narrator used negative pride by being self-centered and cruel to Doodle. In conclusion, the narrator uses both positive and negative pride in the short story, “The Scarlet Ibis.” The narrator is both caring and self-centered, because he was happy when his brother smiled for the first time, but he wanted a normal brother to play with. These are some reasons why, “pride is a wonderful, terrible