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Scarlet Ibis Theme Carelessness

Decent Essays

The story "Scarlet Ibis" written by James Hurst, displays the theme carelessness can lead to dire outcomes. The story begins by describing a 6 year old boy and his parents awaiting the birth of newborn baby, who was not expected to live; yet did and after it survived a few months they decided to name him "William Armstrong". The doctors said that William would never walk or be able to tolerate being hot or cold, shouldn’t be allowed to become too tired and must always be treated gently. William’s brother gave him the nickname, “Doodle”, because with a name like Doodle, not much would be expected of his brother whom he would always pull around in a wagon like a potato. The summer before Doodle’s first year of schooling his older brother was determined to make Doodle more …show more content…

Doodle’s fragile condition could very well cause him to die of exhaustion during the training the brother required of him. This act of carelessness could, and eventually did, prove fatal for young Doodle, even though the brother’s intentions were good, the result was horrible. Towards the end of the story, when Doodle and the brother are walking home in a thunderstorm, the narrator says this, "The faster I walked, the faster he walked, so I began to run. The rain was coming, roaring through the pines, and then like a bursting Roman candle, a gum tree ahead of us was shattered by a bolt of lightning...I heard Doodle, who had fallen behind cried out "Brother, Brother, don't leave me don't leave me!" The brother was putting Doodle through a very stressful situation, where he was overexerting himself, which is exactly what the doctors had warned was not healthy for Doodle. The running, sound of the exploding tree, in addition to the pouring rain and deafening lighting overwhelmed Doodle as his brother, the one he looked up to as his mentor, sprinted away from Doodle to a point where he couldn’t keep up. He was stranded in the middle of nowhere in the cold pouring rain at the tender age of 5 years

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