A first way that Doodle's brother is cruel is when he
shows Doodle his coffin from when Doodle was an infant. Not only does the sight of a
coffin scare a young child, but to consider that it was determined for Doodle himself
made it that much more vulgar. He admits the cruelty in these
lines:
One
time I showed him his casket, telling him how we all believed he would die. When I made
him touch the casket, he screamed. And even when we were outside in the bright sunshine
he clung to me, crying, "Don't leave me, Brother! Don't leave
me!"
A second way he
demonstrates this cruelty happens in the very end. When Doodle's brother leaves him
after it had started to rain, we see abandonment have dire, deadly
consequences:
The rain came, roaring through the pines. And
then, like a bursting Roman candle, a gum tree ahead of us was shattered by a bolt of
lightning. When the deafening thunder had died, I heard Doodle cry out, "Brother,
Brother, don't leave me! Don't leave me!"
The knowledge
that our plans had come to nothing was bitter, and that streak of cruelty within me
awakened. I ran as fast as I could, leaving him far behind with a wall of rain dividing
us. Soon I could hear his voice no
more.
This section shows that
Doodle's brother understood his cruelty. It also demonstrates that each time Doodle's
brother responded this way, Doodle interpreted the act as
abandonment.
For a character in Doodle's condition, no
greater affliction could be done to him by another than that, to be completely
abandoned.
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