The Scarlet Ibis
short story
"The Scarlet Ibis" is a short story written by James Hurst. It was first published in The Atlantic Monthly in July 1960 and won the "Atlantic First" award. The story has become a classic of American literature, and has been frequently republished in high school anthologies and other collections.
Plot
The narrator, who is not named but simply called "Brother", recounts the life of his younger brother, William Armstrong, nicknamed "Doodle". Doodle is born a sickly child, who is not expected to live because of his birth defects. His family even has a small coffin made in anticipation of his death, and presumably chooses the robust name 'William Armstrong' because it would look good on a gravestone. Doodle survives, but for most of his childhood, he is unable to move or respond to his environment. Brother even goes so far as planning to smother the baby with a pillow, thinking that having no brother was better than having a brother who wasn't truly there. Luckily, Doodle smiles at Brother before he can do the deed, and, overjoyed that his brother is smart, Brother leaves him be.
Doodle eventually learns to crawl, even though the doctor says the strain of even sitting up might kill him because of his weak heart.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Scarlet Ibis” as short story. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as short story. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7762429. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1960.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Scarlet Ibis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.