The author engages the reader with poetic descriptions and a reliable narrator. The opening of the story suggests a melancholy mood with descriptions of autumn, graveyard flowers, and the dead. The narrator, Brother, is reliable because he is honest. He doesn't hide his good or bad traits. In fact, this story is somewhat of a confession by Brother about how he treated and mistreated Doodle.
Brother's brutal honesty is what engages the reader directly. Brother...
The author engages the reader with poetic descriptions and a reliable narrator. The opening of the story suggests a melancholy mood with descriptions of autumn, graveyard flowers, and the dead. The narrator, Brother, is reliable because he is honest. He doesn't hide his good or bad traits. In fact, this story is somewhat of a confession by Brother about how he treated and mistreated Doodle.
Brother's brutal honesty is what engages the reader directly. Brother admits that Doodle was a disappointment when he was born. He even admits to conceiving of a way to kill Doodle with a pillow until he discovers that Doodle is in fact "all there" (mentally aware of the world).
The family was certain Doodle would not live long after he was born. So, Father had a casket made. Brother admits to how cruelly he would taunt Doodle with it:
There is within me (and with sadness I have watched it in others) a knot of cruelty borne by the stream of love, much as our blood sometimes bears the seed of our destruction, and at times I was mean to Doodle.
Brother often hears the refrain "Don't leave me, Brother." This gives the reader a foreboding possibility that Brother will leave him in some way. Given Brother's honesty and tendency to push or punish Doodle, the reader is drawn in to the possibility of Doodle being abandoned.
The author also uses poetic language and symbolism to support the themes in the story. The Ibis represents Doodle. Both find themselves in inhospitable environments. The red of the Ibis foreshadows the blood from Doodle.
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