“Scarlet Ibis” By James Hurst

Connect to Your Life Read the paragraph “What People Expect” on 592. Create a bar graph of “the level of expectations” people have for you. Analyze your bar graph and answer the following questions: – Who expects the most of you? Why? – Who expects the least of you? – Do other’s expectations affect your performance? Why or why not? How?

Build Background Setting – Southern cotton farm around WWI – Bleeding Tree – Graveyard flowers – Clove of season

Drawing Conclusions An active reader constantly makes inferences and draws conclusions about what the characters are doing or thinking and what motivates them. Refer to the passages below and record what you can infer about the narrator. PassageInference “It was bad enough having an invalid brother, but having one who possibly was not all there was unbearable” (595). “Doodle told them it was I who had taught him to walk, so everyone wanted to hug me, and I began to cry” (599)

Drawing Conclusions

Using Sensory Language Highlight and label all of the sensory details and figurative language devices that you see “After that day Doodle and I often went down into Old Woman Swamp. I would gather wildflowers, wild violets, honeysuckle, yellow jasmine, snakeflowers, and water lilies, and with wire grass we’d weave them into necklaces and crowns. We’d bedeck ourselves with our handiwork and loll about thus beautified, beyond the touch of the everyday world. Then when the slanted rays of the sun burned orange in the tops of the pines, we’d drop our jewels into the stream and watch them float away toward the sea.” (597)

Theme A theme is the central idea or message in a work of fiction. It is a perception about life or human nature that the writer shares with the reader. Ways to look for a theme include: – Reviewing what happens to the main character? Does the character change during the story? What does the character learn about life? – Skimming key phrases and sentences that say something about life or people in general. – Thinking about the story’s title. Does it have a meaning that could lead to a major theme? – Remembering that a story may have more than one theme.

For the passages below, write what the narrator learns and how the title might connect to that lesson/passage. Theme

What the narrator learnsKey PassageImportance of the title People can sometimes be very cruel to those they love, especially those who are their own flesh and blood. “There is within me (and with sadness I have watched it in others) a know of cruelty borne by the stream of love, much as our blood sometimes bears the seed of our destruction, and I times I was mean to Doodle” (597) The scarlet ibis’s red color symbolizes life-giving blood, the blood that runs through families that can sometimes carry “the seed of our destruction.” It also symbolizes the loss of life: the blood that stains Doodle’s shirt, Doodle’s death under the red nightshade bush, and the bird’s death under the bleeding tree.

Symbol Meaning – something that functions in a way one would expect, but also represents something else Usually stands for something abstract How do you identify symbols? 1.Symbols are often visual. – Ex. The different types of houses in The Three Little Pigs 2.Symbols often appear throughout a story. – Ex. The White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland 3.Symbols are a form of figurative language 4.Symbols often relate to the story’s theme

Symbol QuoteWhat does symbol represent?What thematic message does this connect to? Casket “One day I took him up to the barn loft and showed him his casket, telling him we all had believed he would die.” (597). The casket represents the limitations that people put on Doodle. His family doesn’t expect much of him. It also foreshadows his ultimate death. Doodle is limited by other people’s expectations. We need to accept people for who they are, but not limit them by expecting too little of them. Grindstone

Symbol QuoteWhat does symbol represent? What thematic message does this connect to? Casket “One day I took him up to the barn loft and showed him his casket, telling him we all had believed he would die.” (597). The casket represents the limitations that people put on Doodle. His family doesn’t expect much of him. It also foreshadows his ultimate death. Doodle is limited by other people’s expectations. We need to accept people for who they are, but not limit them by expecting too little of them. Grindstone “A grindstone stands where the bleeding tree once stood.” “But sometimes (like right now), as I sit in the cool, green-draped parlor, the grindstone begins to turn, and time with all its changes is ground away – and I remember Doodle” (595) The grindstone takes the physical place of the bleeding tree. A grindstone is use for sharpening tools, here it seems to represent a sharpening of the the narrator’s mind. The mind seems to “grind away” time and allows the brother to relive the experience. The act of remembering is hard work, like sharpening farm tools. But, this hard work allows the brother to deal with his guilt and grief and put meaning to the experience.