I think that James Hurst’s purpose for writing The Scarlet Ibis is to portray two different morals. The first is that emotions like pride, love and embarrassment can cause us to act inappropriately in an attempt to respond to these powerful feelings. The second is that no one is perfect and we should accept people for who they are. He portrays these morals through three distinct, recurring and obvious ideas. These are: the color red, birds and death. I will focus on the color red and explain how it affects the morals found in this story. The first of the supporting quotations I will use is, “It’s a great big red bird!”. Doodle says this in response to seeing a Scarlet Ibis in the tree in his backyard. The bird