A Hard Struggle
Almost everyone struggles with pride and selfishness at some point in their life. As John C Maxwell said, “There are two kinds of pride, both good and bad. 'Good pride' represents our dignity and self-respect. 'Bad pride' is the deadly sin of superiority that reeks of conceit and arrogance” (Maxwell). This “Bad pride” is a problem that everyone struggles with. In the short story “The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst, the main character struggles with this kind of pride.  “The Scarlet Ibis” is a story of two brothers. Doodle is youngest, and when he is born his whole family assumed he would die. His older brother struggles with pride and selfishness all through the story. Tragically, Doodle dies in the end of the story through his older brother’s selfishness. Through the setting, point of view, and recurring symbols in James Hurst’s “The Scarlet Ibis, we can see an example of how pride and selfishness can quickly overcome us and make us do things that are wrong.
First, the setting Hurst chose in this short story shows evident selfishness in the older brother’s heart. Hurst is constantly changing the setting to cause the reader to understand that the older brother is struggling with his pride, not simply submitting to it. The setting ranges from crazy lightning storms, to calm, almost languishing heat. Likewise, the older brother is fighting an immense and contrasting battle with his pride. Near the beginning of the story, the setting is “in the clove of seasons,  summer was dead but autumn had not yet been born” (Hurst 315). This gives the reader a sense of overpowering death. Soon, though, Doodle’s brother begins to give into his feelings of pride and selfishness, and so the setting changes. “When we reached Horse-head Landing, lightning was playing across half the sky and thunder roared out, hiding even the sound of the sea” (Hurst 322). In a similar way, the older brother’s pride is growing quickly, and is now reaching its height. The “hiding even the sound of the sea” (Hurst 322) also suggests that the older brother’s feelings are drowning out everything that is happening around him. In conclusion, we can see how the writer used the setting to demonstrate how, in this story and in our own lives, pride is a powerful force that takes a lot of work to get rid of.
The point of view that this tragedy was written from also affects the way that the reader interprets the older brother’s pride. The story being written by Doodle’s brother (who the is narrator of the story), at a later time in his life, causes the reader pay more attention to the point the writer is striving to make. When the narrator says “It’s strange that all this is still so clear to me, now that that summer has long since fled and time has had its way” (Hurst 316)  it is suggesting that the narrator is quite a bit older and more experienced than when the story took place. Thus, Doodle’s brother is probably being honest about his pride, and using his past experiences to show the reader why we should not let Maxwell’s “bad pride” get ahold of us. 
Lastly, the narrator directly states what an enormous problem his pride was. He says, “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” (Hurst 318). At this point, the older brother’s pride is still somewhat developing, and he doesn’t quite realize that this “cruelty” is really his pride. When the parents of the two brothers discover that the older brother has taught Doodle to walk, Doodle’s brother begins to cry. “‘What are you crying for?’ asked Daddy, but I did not answer. They did not know that I did it for myself; that pride, whose slave I was, spoke to me louder than all their voices; and that Doodle walked only because I was ashamed of having a crippled brother” (Hurst 319). The narrator is directly stating that his pride is the only reason he had decided to teach Doodle to walk.
As you can see,  James Hurst’s  “The Scarlet Ibis” clearly shows how quickly pride and selfishness can overcome anyone, not just Doodle’s brother. The setting Hurst chose when he wrote this short story repeatedly remind the reader of how much of a struggle pride is. Since the story is being told by the main character, the reader is assured of the accurate nature of the main character’s thoughts. Lastly, the older brother directly states his reasons for teaching Doodle to walk. We should all learn from the main character’s mistakes and should question ourselves from time to time whether we’re doing a thing for our own selves or whether we’re actually doing it for the sake of others.


Works Cited List

Hurst, James. “The Scarlet Ibis.” 2003. Holt Elements of Literature. Austin, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2003. 315-23. Print
Maxwell, John C. "Search." BrainyQuote. Xplore, n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.