Parallel Lives: Doodle and the Ibis

Do you have many things in common with someone? Maybe you even know twins. Well, Doodle and the ibis in James Hurst’s The Scarlet Ibis have many similarities. We learn early in the story that Doodle was expected to die at a young age. When he was born he had many complications. His brother was determined to help him and eventually he had surprised his family and the people who had doubted him. The ibis was very alike Doodle in the way that they had both done things that amazed people, especially Doodle’s family. The ibis was looked as small and frail. Come to find later in the story, the ibis was very strong at heart just as Doodle was.
Doodle was known to be fragile and had many problems in the beginning of the story. He was born with a large head and small body. His head was red and Doodle’s brother was worried because he wanted to have a normal brother. In the story it says, “Everybody thought he was going to die, everybody except aunt Nicey, who had delivered him” (Hurst 462). They had even went to the extent to build him a coffin. Doodle was highly doubted and this leads part of me to think that this is the main reason he had tried so hard, besides the

We learn his real background when the story comes out and says, “It lives in the tropics—South America to Florida. A storm must have brought it here.’ Sadly, we all looked back at the bird. A scarlet ibis! How many miles it had traveled to die like this, in our yard, beneath the bleeding tree” (Hurst 473). The family thought the ibis wasn’t as strong as he really was. They judged him by his appearance and condition he was in. This was the same way they had judged Doodle when he first born. Also, the fact that the family refers to the ibis as ‘it’ really shows you how they thought of him, not enough. The family came to find out how tough the ibis was compared to their previous thought of him, that he was