




The story “Joyas Volardores” by Brian Doyle utilizes numerous comparisons of different animal hearts and the way they live. Doyle discusses the meaning of the heart by saying “So much held in a heart in a lifetime” (96). Doyle is not just talking about the way you are alive with this saying, instead he is talking about the meaning of the heart. The meaning of a heart is complex and different for everyone. It is created by oneself at a young age and changes slightly depending on the things that happen in one’s life. Humans will always want to connect to others so they can understand people or other animals and break this barrier between each other. “Joyas Volardores” illustrates the point that everyone wants to connect to others, but they can’t.

Humans aren’t the only creatures that can’t understand one another, different animals also can’t understand each other. Doyle doesn’t use humans in the story, until the end, as examples in the story; he illustrates the differences in animals to discuss the different type of hearts. Doyle talks about hummingbirds and the way they live their life, “A hummingbird’s heart beats ten times a second. A hummingbird’s heart is the size of a pencil eraser” (Doyle 94). This doesn’t seem like anything, but Doyle is using the hummingbird as an example of a heart that does things quickly and lives its life at a fast paced, even though it is so tiny. The hummingbird is doing everything full throttle and in an instance, it can crash and die completely. There is so little that the hummingbird can appreciate because it tries to do everything in an instance. The hummingbird doesn’t savor anything it goes on its way as fast as it can through life. The meaning of the heart to the hummingbird is something to be used fast and that should have little to no rest. Then all of a sudden Doyle starts talking about the complete opposite of the hummingbird. He starts talking about blue whales and their hearts. Blue whale hearts are the biggest in the world, while the hummingbirds is extremely tiny. The difference in the heart sizes exemplifies the difference in their lives. Because they live such different lifestyles it would be impossible for them to understand why the other lives such a different life. Doyle is trying to demonstrate that no matter who it is you will never truly know another’s heart, even if you think it would be easy to know what they do. The best you can do for understanding others hearts is to assume, but you will never truly be able to understand others hearts.

People try to understand other organisms in life all the time. We call this science, but this is an impossible feat. Why is it impossible, though? Well we know the nature of organisms, but we don’t know what their dreams are or what they crave in life. The hearts of these organisms are different with themselves and different from us also. The only thing we know for sure is we all want something out of life after all, “we all churn inside” (Doyle 96). The meaning of this is that the one similarity that each heart wants something which could be as simple as craving food at the time or it can be as big as fulfilling your dream. This one similarity is what leads us to try to learn about others and to connect with the heart any way that we can. The problem is that we can’t understand what each other want.

There is so much in the world that a person will never understand and the individual hearts of different creatures or even other human beings is one of those things. Doyle states this with “we open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart” (96). Every person has different experiences and different ways they will react to these situations that will create who they are. There can be people that are similar to each other, but they will never be exactly the same. There are always differences in people and for any person, no matter who they are, you will never be able to understand their heart. 

The choices people make will also be different for each person. Some people will choose the same choices when presented with the same experience, but if there were multiple different experiences for a group of people there will be different choices within those experiences. Now you might think that this isn’t really important, but this is probably one of the most important things that humans try to understand. Everyone is trying to understand one another, whether it is through learning other languages, religion, or different types of government. It doesn’t stop there, though; it is in the small parts of life too. Have you ever talked to your friends and didn’t understand the meaning of what they said and you wondered what it meant? That’s you trying to understand them and the reason you don’t know what they are saying might be because it’s a saying from where he used to live or it just might’ve come from an experience he had in the past. The story helps us see through different examples that everyone is always trying to understand one another because everyone wants to connect to another in some way and they want to be able to learn what others want in life and more importantly want others to know what they truly want in life. 

Doyle demonstrates with this that there are so many differences in hearts and that we will never truly understand each other. The fact that the hummingbird and blue whale have completely different intentions summarizes his reason. Even between people, there is always differences in each heart. The meaning of each heart is completely different and people will always be trying to find these differences. After all, if we were ever able to break this barrier of the heart, we would be able to connect to everyone and all of a sudden we would have a very different world. 


