"You may not always end up where you thought you were going, But you will always end up where you were meant to be." This is a story of a boy that was expected to die but instead, is born with disabilities. Over the course of the story, he learns to do things like how to walk and play because of his older brother’s help. One day his older brother pushed him too far and caused the boy to die. James Hurst uses symbolism to make “The Scarlet Ibis” more interesting.

In the short story “The Scarlet Ibis”, the author makes the bird symbolize Doodle.
The bird and Doodle have similar deaths because they are both pushed beyond what they are capable of doing. You can tell from when the family watches the scarlet ibis on the tree, “At that moment, the bird began to flutter but the wings were uncoordinated” (Hurst 602). This shows …show more content…
When Doodle dies it states in the story, “He had been bleeding from the mouth, and his neck and the front of his shirt were stained a brilliant red” (Hurst ). You can infer that the description red stands for the all the blood he is covered in and since he is covered in all this blood it is clear that Doodle is dying. This symbolism makes the story more interesting because it’s boring if everything in a story is spelled out for you. When you have symbolism, you yourself form parts of the story that aren’t plainly written. This and the other examples of symbolism used in “The Scarlet Ibis” allows readers to see a deeper meaning of those things in the story.

"You may not always end up where you thought you were going, but you will always end up where you were meant to be." This quote means that despite the fact that where he was actually meant to be was not on Earth, he managed to get through tough battles for the time he was alive. The things he dealt with were represented by the symbols the author used to make the short story more interesting, the scarlet ibis and the color