Analyzing the body and life of animals has led to amazing discoveries and realizations. In the essay, “Joyas Volardores”, Brian Doyle uses figurative language to illustrate how precious life is and how important the experience of emotion is. He describes the hearts and lives of animals to illustrate that all living creatures experience emotion. At first, he vividly describes the life of a hummingbird, and goes deep into detail about their hearts. He later talks about the life and heart of a blue whale. At first glance, these animals may seem like polar opposites, but through the use of figurative language, Doyle is able to connect these animals and develop his overall theme that life is delicate and how emotions play a big role in our lives.

Doyle uses metaphors many times throughout this essay to describe the hearts of the hummingbird and blue whale. Hummingbirds are known for being small delicate creatures, while blue whales are known for being massive beasts of the ocean. Doyle informs the reader about the metabolism of the hummingbird, and how quickly the heart must work in order to keep up with their metabolism. He shows how delicate the hummingbird’s life is by explaining that whenever the hummingbird stops flying, their heart rate nearly stops beating and in some cases, they die.   “It’s expensive to fly. You burn out. You fry the machine. You melt the engine. Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old” (95).  This metaphor can be applied to how we live our lives. However, Doyle does not comment on which is better. The point he is trying to make is that you have the power to choose the way you want to live your life. Doyle wants the reader to know that nobody should tell you how to live you your life.

Another metaphor that Doyle uses to explain the fast, hard-working lifestyle of the hummingbird is when he compares their hearts to a race-car. Race-car’s engines are no normal engine in that they are work harder than just your normal engine. The driver is constantly changing gears and driving at high speeds, so in some cases, the engine burns out, just like how a hummingbird’s heart can give out whenever it takes a rest, which Doyle explained earlier in the text. “Hummingbird’s, like all flying birds but more so, have incredible enormous metabolisms. To drive those metabolisms, they have a race-car hearts that eat oxygen at an eye-popping rate” (95).

Doyle transitions from talking about a hummingbird, to the largest animal on our planet: the blue whale. He also describes the heart of the blue whale by using similes to inform the reader of this massive creature. “It’s as big as a room. It is a room, with four chambers. A child could walk around it, head high, bending only to step through the valves. The valves are as big as the swinging doors in a saloon. This house of a heart drives a creature a hundred foot long” (95). This description also supports the claim that you in fact have the choice as to how you want to live. You can live fast like a hummingbird, or slow like a blue whale. Later in the paragraph, Doyle talks about the emotions of the blue whale. “But we know this: the animals with the largest hearts in the world generally travel in pairs, and their penetrating moaning cries, their piercing yearning tongue, can be heard underwater for miles and miles” (96). Through the use of imagery, Doyle is able to inform the reader of the importance of love and emotion. Even animals as massive and dominant as the blue whale need love and affection. Doyle ends the paragraph by saying, “We all churn inside” (96). Doyle talks to the reader in first person here because he is trying to speak to the reader personally. What he is trying to stress the fact that everyone experiences emotion. 

In the final paragraph of the poem, Doyle continues his insightful take on human emotion. He compares the heart to a house, and how we let people in, only to have our house torn down. “We are utterly open with no one in the end - not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart” (96).  Doyle is trying to explain the concept of love, and how it’s natural to let people into our lives that are going to hurt us. He later goes on to explain how when someone breaks your heart, through “time and will, patched by force of character” (96), things will get better and you will learn from it.   This is just an inevitable cycle that occurs throughout our lives. 

Doyle’s use of figurative devices was effective and allowed him to illustrate how delicate life is and how important the experience of emotions is. Doyle’s use of similes and metaphors allowed the reader to look at the comparisons he was making through the lens of nature. The comparison that developed his theme the most was the comparison of the hummingbird to the tortoise. “You can spend them slowly, and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old” (95). This simple comparison of two animals had a very deep meaning: live life with care because you never know when it will be taken away from you. 