The Scarlet Ibis Character Analysis

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Analysis Essay Just like any tool in a writer’s arsenal, characterization has the power to affect the meaning of any story. As a reader, I know full well the power characterization holds, and more specifically, the power it hold in the story “The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst. How the writer characterizes the characters in the Scarlet Ibis enforces the meaning of the theme, and what the story communicate. Doodle was portrayed in the story as a tenacious dreamer. He didn’t believe he could walk, he believed what the doctors and his family members said, yet when he was presented with the idea of training to walk, he hesitated, but later persisted. “Every day of that summer” the two siblings went to the Old Woman Swamp, and each afternoon, Doodle tried to walk at least “100 times”. He took a little bit of pushing and firm motivation to try, but nevertheless he tried at the end of the day, which shows persistency. As soon as he learned how to walk, he loved the idea. Doodle was proud of himself, and for his brother. After their success, Doodle began to believe in the power of persistency, and in his brother’s “infallibility”, and they began their newly devised plan where Doodle would learn how to fight, swim, run, and even how to climb trees. They, of course, persisted and fought to try and finish the learning…show more content…
It greatly influences the story, what will happen in the story, and what theme the story will communicate. The extremely solid characterization of the two main characters, Doodle and his brother, leads to the finale, which communicates the theme. The clear mistakes made in the story, like the excessive and unsupervised rehabilitation of Doodle, that occur because of the characters characterization, really show the reader what the main characters did wrong, and shows that to the reader not to do it either. After all, as it is said in the story, “Pride is a seed that bears to seeds; life and

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