In all of the world, there are hundreds of living organisms that must eat and breath in order to sustain life. Each organism will vary in a million different ways; some will have feathers, others scales. There are several organisms, such as birds, that have evolved to have the ability to fly through the air, while other organisms, such as fish, have evolved to breath under water. Despite these genetic differences, all living organisms will share one quality:  a heart. Regardless the size of the organism, the type, the age, or the environment that the organism lives in, they will all have a beating heart. This heart, a living organ, is what is responsible for the circulation of blood and other nutrients through out the body of the organism, which then causes the body to become fluid and ever changing. In Brian Doyle's essay, "Joyas Volardores," he explores the hearts of various organisms through the rhetorical devices of strategic sentence organization, the comparison between two objects, and the use of personified imagery to make his piece come alive, in order to convey the image of a beating, living heart, that has an ability to love and work much like a living organism.

In this piece, Doyle first starts off his essay by speaking about the characteristics that make up a hummingbird's heart. When writing, he uses phrases such as, "a hummingbird's heart beats ten times a second," "a hummingbird's heart is the size of a pencil eraser," and "a hummingbird's heart is a lot of the hummingbird," (64) in an organized, yet repetitive manor, to emphasize the importance of the bird's heart by bringing up this similar sentence structure multiple times within one paragraph. He continues this technique later on in the essay when he says, "they can drive ," "they can fly backward ,"and "they can fly more than " (Doyle 65). The rhythmic tone of Doyle's writing almost makes the reader feel like they can hear the physical beating of the bird's heart as the phrases are repeated. This helps the reader to more clearly see and understand the birds heart, how it works, how it reacts, and how it functions. When speaking of organizational techniques, the reader might notice the order in which Doyle presented the information in his essay. Doyle began by out with a small organism's heart, specifically a hummingbird, then finished his essay by speaking about the human heart. This strategic essay organization allowed Doyle to speak of how the heart functions in other animals so that once he spoke of the human heart, the story would then become personal to the reader, so that it could influence the emotions of the reader. 

When speaking of the different animals in this piece, Doyle does not merely describe the animal's characteristics with meek descriptions. Instead, he choses to describe the animals by using the method of comparison. Doyle discusses the beating patterns of the animal hearts and writes, "you can spend them slowly like a tortoise or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird" (65). In this sentence, Doyle is comparing the speeds of the two animal hearts, which allows the reader to understand that even though both animal's hearts beat at different rates, they will beat almost the same number of times in the animal's life times. This is said so that the reader first starts to see how the animal's hearts will develop over time, and also shows how the heart will evolve and experience differences much like an organism, but yet end up with the same outcome. Doyle continues to use examples of comparison in attempt to draw connections between the animals or objects in his text even when he compares the structure of a heart to a house. He says, "the valves are as big as the swinging doors in a saloon this house of a heart drives a creature a hundred feet long" (Doyle 65). When using this house comparison, Doyle is comparing the layout and strength of a heart to a house so that the reader can develop a sense of how strong and large a heart can be. These two examples help transform image of the heart into an organ because they allow the reader to more realistically see how the heart is so much like a living creature that evolves and transforms, rather than an unchanging organ in the circulatory system.

During this essay when Doyle described the hearts of organisms, he was able to make his piece come alive because he described them in a humanized way that made them seem like more an organism then just an organ. In the beginning of his writing, Doyle chose to start out with phrases such as, " gulp more oxygen," " search for food," and "stripped to the skin " (66), to allow the reader to mentally picture the hummingbird's heart working and acting much in a way that an animal would, as if it was its own being. Doyle intertwines this thought of personifying the heart as an organism through imagery in the whole essay, and later this imagery pops up again when Doyle writes that hearts are, " eternally in motion, washing from side to side swirling, whirling," and when he says that, " we all churn inside" (66). Doyle's humanized word choice allows the reader to picture a heart physically swirling and whirling, so that the reader can mentally form an image of the churning motion of the heart. Finally, at the end of his essay, Doyle tells the reader that the heart will have, "so much held in a lifetime so much held in a day, an hour, in a moment" (Doyle 66). He has personified the heart, and humanized it to show the reader the final emotional outcome that the heart must bear:  heartbreak. Doyle has spoken about heartbreak to show the reader that the heart will feel and experience emotions much like a human would, which is a quality that an organ would not possess. 

In the essay, "Joyas Volardores," Brian Doyle attempts to bring life to the image of a heart through the use of strategically organized sentences, through the comparison of the heart to other living objects, and through the use of personified imagery, so that he can portray the image of a living, breathing heart. All throughout this essay, Doyle attempts to use rhetorical devices to make the heart become humanized so that the reader can understand how it looks, how it is organized, and most importantly, how it is much like a living being that can experience emotion. Doyle attempts to make the heart seem vividly alive through out his essay so that he can play on the emotions of the reader and in doing this, Doyle wants the readers to realize that the heart must endure the the real world much like any living organism would. The heart of an organism will experience the pleasant emotions of life such as excitement, joy, friendship, love, but must also withstand the unpleasant events of the world much like any human would. 

