"An Obligation to not the men, but to the dead rabbit...'
Guilty or innocent In the story: The Scarlet Ibis, by James Hurst, Brother is neither guilty nor innocent. To elaborate, I’m taking a neutral approach to this; the only side I lean towards is my own. While examples tend to point to one side or the other, I believe that if they conflict with one another then the lines are blurred into ambiguity. Perhaps one of the earliest examples of an uncertainty in the narration occurs in the descriptions in Doodle, which differs greatly from how Brother acts within the story itself. ‘Doodle was just about the craziest brother a boy every had. Of course, he wasn't crazy crazy like old Miss Leedie, who was in love with President Wilson and wrote him a letter every day, but was a nice crazy, like someone you meet in your dreams.’ While Brother might not be praising Doodle, he certainly isn’t negatively describing him either. I do believe when Brother is telling us this story he is no longer the impulsive immature boy he once was, and now has become wiser and more accepting of his deceased sibling. So in the long run, I don’t believe that it’s fair to say whether or not Brother is guilty, because he is presented as a child who makes childish decisions. If I were to choose a ‘guilty’ party, it would be his parents. They have the authority over him, they could’ve told him to stop, but they didn’t. They were neglectful, and they lost their son because of it. looking backI actually think my writing style has faltered a bit, and I find putting together sentences that flow easily to actually be harder than I used to. I think it's mainly due to writer's block, though sometimes I get rather lazy, and other times I feel apathetic about certain topics.
I don't particularly use school taught techniques which I find are usually introduced to us in the most patronizing ways imaginable. Smiley faced sentences, what were they thinking? If I had to choose, it would be the fact that my voice was presented in the piece. I like the way my opinions got across. I feel like that's one of the things that would always improve a writing piece. I would like to improve the detailed aspects of it, I wish that I had put a little more elaboration on a few parts. I look back on the SI story and I think I have an overall better appreciation for it.
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Maybe by the time Brother’s narrating this story he becomes more mature, but by the end of the story there isn’t enough evidence to show that he has truly changed in a very extreme or even noticeable way. If you want to stretch a bit, you could say he become more accepting of Doodle, however with Brother’s new found heart of familial support, he also became cocky in his own abilities which lead to his brother’s death. If we were given time to see his reaction after Doodle’s death, and we were allowed to see him mourn or take something out of his experiences, then we can say for sure if he is a dynamic character, but right now I don’t think he is. He didn’t learn anything, and the story fails to go on after Doodle’s death. Brother and Doodle don’t really have a very typical relationship, mostly because one sibling is sickly and the other’s arrogantly ignorant. I detected quite a bit of actual malice from brother’s end towards Doodle. He does mirror some typical frustrations of a sibling, and Doodle definitely looked up to Brother, but other than that they really had a very turbulent and rough relationship. The color red is the color of the bird, the blood, and fire. It naturally makes us squeamish if we equate the color to human bodily fluids. It’s also the color of passion and drive, it’s one of the most expressive colors known to humans. It can represent the garish beginning of life, and at the same time the fiery end of one. Here in the story though, it seems to represent loneliness, the Scarlet Ibis-bright red bird- died alone, and away from its home. In the end Doodle basically passed away alone in a pool of his blood. When brother is crying, red is present, probably to represent guilt and sadness. So red means very strong emotions in this story, as well human conceptions and life. Then entire last paragraph on page 5. The title. The very last page are all examples of death imagery. (pg 6) ‘Lightning was playing across half the sky’ (pg 6) ‘What are the words that can solder cracked pride’ (pg 6) ‘Bursting like a Roman candle’ (pg 6) ‘Wall of rain sperapting us’
Looking backI actually enjoyed writing about this topic to be honest, not the vocabulary part, but discussing Brother and his point of view. He's a rather odd character in that we don't know how old he is by the time he's telling us the story, he could be on his death bed for all we know. It sort of puts everything in a certain perspective when you remember that Brother was a little kid when everything happened between him and 'Doodle'. Still a pretty bad thing to do to his brother, but the narrator was also young too, and probably didn't know too much about what his sibling was going through.
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