Character Analysis: The Scarlet Ibis and The Necklace

Rohit Chandwadkar
Mr. Witkowski
Academic English I 1A
5 December 2014
In "The Necklace" written by Guy de Maupassant and in "The Scarlet Ibis" written by
James Hurst, the respective protagonists, Madame Loisel and Doodle's brother were both driven by their pride and made mistakes. Madame Loisel’s pride was that she believed that the situation she was in did not fit the who she was. Doodle’s brother’s pride was that he could not stand having a disabled brother, so he chose to help Doodle, with the wrong intent. Towards the end of each short story, Madame Loisel character growth is not evident and does not grow out of her prideful self, while Doodle’s brother character growth is evident at the very end and realized that his pride had led to his brother’s death and decided to change for the better.
In the beginning of the story Madame Loisel was a really prideful person. She felt like she was born to royalty and “feeling herself born for every delicacy and every luxury.”
(Maupassant 1), In fact, she was a wife to someone who was a clerk at a government building.
That means that her status is not bad, but all she could think of was that “she suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, [...] all these things, which another woman of her caste would not even have noticed, tortured her and made her indignant.” (1). With such harsh words, she believes this situation is not fit for her and is mad, because she is suffering opposed to enjoying life. Her pride is linked to her unhappiness, because she believes her status is getting in the way of how people should view her, ultimately hurting her pride. Towards the end of the story, she is no better, even after ten years. She should have learned from her previous experiences, but does not. Instead she

curses at her friend and says she “[has] had days hard enough, since I have seen you, days wretched enough­­­and that because of you!” (5). Madame Loisel is not thankful to Madame
Forestier for lending her the necklace, but rather angry with her. This would not have happened if Madame Loisel did not let her pride control her when she lost the necklace, instead she should have told her up front she lost it. Her pride affected this, because she wanted to look more like a trustworthy person and not let the fact that she is untrustworthy hurt her pride.
In the beginning of the other story, Doodle’s brother, was a prideful character who could not stand having a brother who was disabled. The narrator says that he was so embarrassed of having a five­year­old brother who could not walk, that he was going to teach him how to walk.
When his dad asked why he helped Doodle walk, the only thing he thought was of “they did not know that I did it for myself; that pride, whose slave I was, [...] Doodle walked only because I was ashamed of having a crippled brother.” (Hurst 218). His embarrassment is caused by his pride, because his pride was hurt since Doodle could not walk. The walking hurt the narrator’s pride, because he did not wanted to be known as a person with a disabled brother. The narrator said that he wanted to teach Doodle everything before he goes to school, so this might be playing in a role in the narrator’s pride, because he may not want anyone to know he is the brother of a disabled person. However, towards the end of the story, he does not care about his pride, when
Doodle dies. At the end he begins to cry and sat there with his brother “for a long time, it seemed forever, [...] sheltering [his] fallen scarlet ibis from the heresy of the rain.” (225). This is the point when the narrator realizes that he abandoned his brother and the beginning of him abandoning his pride. The narrator abandons his pride, because his pride stands for nothing, because all he has done for his brother has been wasted.