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Ecology’s Principles Applied to “The Scarlet Ibis”
modern human nature. It shows that for all of the, social, political, theological,
ideological, and overall cultural advancements of the human race, the rules of
evolution stay etched into our skin. The adjectives “modern” and “human” are only
masks used to cover up a greater meaning. The nature of life, the nature of ecology.
his story. These factors play into the narrator’s cruelty towards his brother, Doodle’s
attachment to the narrator, and the various acts of kindness throughout the story
Two species that compete for the same resources cannot stably coexist.
One of the two competitors will always have [at the very least] an every
so slight advantage over the other that leads to the extinction of the
second competitor in the long run.1
In the case presented in “The Scarlet Ibis”, the two species would be the narrator
and his younger brother Doodle. The resource that both are trying to attain is
effect on him, and which Doodle cannot gain because of the unattainable goals that
the narrator sets for him. The edge which the narrator has is not slight at all. It is, in
fact, enormous. He has the power to control Doodle, for Doodle is emotionally
reliant on him. If not for the narrator’s mental dominance over his brother, the
younger boy would not have killed himself in an effort to catch up to the narrator at
the end of the story. In fact, if Doodle hadn’t leaned so much on the narrator for
emotional support, he wouldn’t have been outside in the first place, because he
wouldn’t have been conditioning for his brother. The narrator says that he trained
Doodle during the summer with a tough regiment, during the last few weeks even
making the boy “swim until he turned blue and row until he couldn’t lift and oar,”†
(p. 195), yet Doodle still used his brother as a emotional crutch.
In fact, Doodle kept to the narrator throughout almost the entire story. Even
before he could walk, Doodle tried his best to be close to the narrator at all times,
“If I so much as picked up my cap, he’d start crying to go with me…”† (p. 190). This
species of very different strengths. In common principle, the weaker animal will
make itself an integral part of the stronger one’s life, feeding off of the more
murderous actions of the tapeworm (parasitism).2 What Doodle does is, in effect, an
attempt at commensalism. He tries to get attention from the narrator without any
intention to harm him. But this doesn’t work out well, because Doodle’s relationship
with the narrator causes him to build an emotional reliance. Like a drug addict,
And to tie in with emotions, actions based off sympathy throughout the story
realizing that if they help others, those same people will help them in return. This
concept of what goes around comes around is likely to be the root of sympathy, for
those who acted kindly received more help from others, and so reproduced more,
passing on the trait of sympathy down the hereditary line3 to the characters in “The
Scarlet Ibis”. During the beginning, the mother already feels a sympathetic
connection with Doodle when he is born all too frail and sickly. At the end, the
narrator’s sympathy for Doodle shows as he mourns the boy’s death. But the best
example of sympathy in this story is the scarlet ibis and Doodle. For an exotic,
unnamed reason, Doodle connects with the scarlet ibis soon after he sights it. He is
solemn in its presence, loses his appetite (something that doesn’t happen very
often among juvenile males), and goes to great lengths to bury the fallen animal:
It is obvious that there exists a great amount of sympathy in the human race. And
though this trait was developed recently by the standards of the most ancient
The eldest ties of biology’s history bind the characteristics of human nature
symbiosis, and sympathy between other forms of life is shown throughout the story,
mainly in the incident with the scarlet ibis. Though it isn’t known whether he meant
to or not, Hurst did a fine job in relating the fundamental, primordial elements of
ecology to modern humankinds’ actions in his short story “The Scarlet Ibis”.
Works Cited
†. All quotations marked with page numbers come from the following source:
Hurst, James. “The Scarlet Ibis.” Literature: World Masterpieces. Fames Corcoran,
Jeannette Faurot, et al. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Prentice-Hall Inc., 1995. Pages
189-198.
2. Abbott, Dave. “Symbiosis.” Starship: Millennium Voyage. May 2000. 19 April 2009.
<http://www.ms-starship.com/sciencenew/symbiosis.htm>.
3. Darwin, Charles. “Descent of Man.” The Secular Web. 1871. 19 April 2009.
<http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles_darwin/descent_of_man/chapter_0
5.html>.