





Imagine a beautiful humming bird, miniscule in size but ferocious in flight. Now imagine the great blue whale, incredibly large, yet creates penetrating cries when alone (Doyle 96). Now imagine us, the human. We all exist at the same time, but how we live is decided by us. We all have one thing in common, and it is one of the basic building blocks of life: a heart. A heart that beats, loves, and lasts us a lifetime. Brian Doyle the author of “Joyas Volardores,” illustrates through symbolism that the heart, as an organ, ties every creature together, but the emphasized use of emotion is what separates humans apart from the rest.

When we think of the word heart we envision the red and pink symbols of love, or we conceptualize that pounding organ that courses the blood through our veins. Either way, every animal and human alike has at least one. Throughout this short story the word and symbol heart is repeated constantly and is used to compare multiple different creatures. Through this the author, Brian Doyle, has conveyed how important the heart is to every living thing. The heart is the central part of the cardiovascular system. So no matter how tiny or enormous the creature, for example the humming bird and the blue whale that Doyle uses, both have hearts, but theses two creatures symbolize how we as humans can live our lives. The humming bird uses its heart to carry out its dangerous day-to-day life, buzzing around in a panic to find food. This symbolizes a person who lives fast without looking back to reflect. On the other hand the blue whale uses their hearts to slowly guide them along to finding their mate. Now this symbolizes someone who lives his or her life slowly and passionately. The humming bird’s heart is taut and tough, but the whale’s is large enough to fit a small child in. With the repetition of the word heart, it sets a clear view on how the author wants us to view ourselves compared to whatever else is on this planet. We are different, and through comparing animals to humans symbolically, we can see that our use of emotions sets us apart. 

Now the life expectancy of the heart can be completely different for various creatures. “Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a life time” (Doyle 96). The author implies that we can spend these heartbeats as slowly or as quickly as we would like to. Doyle illustrates that no matter how short or long a life is, all of it has a meaning and a purpose. He uses the tortoise as another example to explain this relationship. The tortoise spends its days basking in the sun while gingerly munching on any vegetation that it can find (Doyle 96). It just spends its days slowly, almost like the whale. This is another symbolic example of how humans can live. However, the lifetime of a heart is unbearably limited. We only have a certain number of beats to keep us going and it is our decision on how we want to spend them. Brian Doyle uses this example of life expectancy to show that emotion makes up our lives, and is what keeps us going. 

Brian Doyle also states, “We all churn inside” (96). This means we all have some form of motion continually going on in our bodies. It is something that stands out so much in this story that Doyle makes us reconsider; what’s the whole point? The point is that the ‘interior motion’ is the pumping of our blood, but it means more than that. Our hearts and blood only get us so far in life. The heart allows us to live, but we make the choices to take ourselves different places. We churn because that’s our purpose. We, as humans live life in different ways but we are put on this Earth to move, to find our way, in a limited amount of time, and emotion allows us to do that.

The only thing that is different about our hearts is that we, as humans, live with emotion. With any kind of emotion comes heartbreak, whether it is the death of a love one, a break up, or even as Brian Doyle puts it, “the words I have something to tell you” (96). No matter how simple the heartbreak is, it will always be enough to tear down that wall we build around our hearts. In those moments, the walls around our hearts crack and crumble under the pressure of these emotions. It scars and bruises our hearts just as Doyle explains it, “that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will” (96). Through this example we can see that Doyle believes emotions can be extremely hard to overcome. However, he also believes with time we will be able to get through hard challenges in life, because we are only human.

With time comes healing, no matter what out hearts go through we can patch them up. Yes, there will be scars, and yes it will be painful, but with a lifetime so short everyone has to go through rough times to experience the good. Brian Doyle shows us exactly that through his short story. He guides us through the life of different creatures and he shows us that everyone’s hearts are scarred and torn at the end of the day. The reason for those scars and bruises are because the heart has learned to heal, but it did not heal on its own. We will always be strong, no matter what tries to tear our hearts down.


