By emphasizing the biological aspects of the heart to indirectly discuss love, the author of Joyas Volardores, Brian Doyle, eliminates emotions typically elicited when discussing the topic. Love is an emotional topic associated with feelings of happiness, comfort, and desire to spend time with others. There is no way to measure an amount of love or to test the feeling of love. However, the author of the text provides scientific discovery and physical anatomy repeating the word “heart” to reiterate the lack of boundaries that true love endures. Doyle writes a poem that does not follow typical poetic style; it does not contain versus or stanzas rather sentences and paragraphs. There is no rhyme or meter. Even though he uses an atypical approach to convey feelings of love, Doyle leaves the reader with a warm sentiment about relationships. Doyle includes research based facts about the physical attributes of hearts of particular animals to support the real characteristics of love like, the physical size of one’s heart, the complexity of one’s heart, the number of relationships, and the age of the individual. 

Doyle limits his discussion to only include animals; however, the ability to love in both animals and humans is not limited by the physical size of one’s heart. In the text, Doyle provides examples of two animals with extremely different size hearts.  He emphasizes the tiny size of a hummingbird’s heart in comparison to, “the size of a pencil eraser” (Doyle, 94) and a second reference is made to the hummingbird’s heart being the size of “an infant’s fingernail.” (95) Doyle intentionally selected the hummingbird because they are rarely seen and when spotted the vision is treasured. Conversely, both a pencil eraser and a child’s fingernail are easily imagined and their size visibly recognized. These characteristics can be applied to love. Like the sighting of a hummingbird, love should be valued. He contrasts that description to the enormity of the heart found in a blue whale. Doyle describes this heart as, “It is as big as a room.” (95)  He relates the room to a size, “A child could walk around in.”(95)  This is a literal comparison of two vastly different physical size hearts that is provided as symbolic representation of the limitless volume of love each individual is capable of feeling. A fetus in the womb with an incredibly small heart is still capable of unconditional love. The minute the newborn is birthed, it relies solely on its parents. The relationship between a baby and a mother is the strongest bond. While this human does not even possess facial features, a mother will feel the heart beat and is already capable of unconditional love for something unseen. Put simply human love is not quantified by the size of the hearts of the individuals. By comparing the physical size of the two non-human hearts, Doyle supports his inference that love is possible regardless of heart size.

Relationships are often complicated, requiring a balance of respect and understanding for one’s heritage; however, Doyle writes of a different complexity. He describes the intricate biological differences of different non-human hearts that can be applied to human love. He emphasizes the different configurations of hearts such as, four chambered birds, three chambered reptiles, one chamber insects, and worms with eleven single chamber hearts. Details like the chambers of different hearts can be related to different racial, socio-economic, and religious backgrounds that humans bring to relationships of love. The intricate biologic designs of different hearts do not alter or limit the ability to love.  Doyle supports that regardless of how each heart is designed, each is capable of experiencing love. He also includes a mechanical description of the hummingbird metabolism and heart activity. With this approach, he compares the hummingbird’s heart to an engine and details the function, “Their hearts are built of thinner, leaner fibers than ours. Their arteries are stiffer and more taut” (95). By providing the mechanical description, Doyle eliminates any emotional connection and instead focuses on the mechanical details. Doyle provides support that the physical heart of these animals is both complex in its formation but also the way it must function for survival in the wilderness. Doyle’s inclusion of many scientific facts about different hearts emphasizes the complexities of relationships while maintaining that love can survive all differences. 

Age is not a limiting factor in the ability to experience love. Doyle limits love to our time on Earth, he describes, “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 statement supports that all creatures possess the emotion of love regardless of how long they live. Another biological example of love transpiring regardless of age is the shift in the blue whale’s love of its mother to its mating partner. Doyle includes the description of the blue whale’s feeding pattern and emphasizes the dependency this large mammal has on its mother for as many as 7 to 8 years before striking out on its own. The whale leaves its mother to seek the companionship of its mate, whom it remains with for the rest of its life. The author does not share this as a testimony to the survival skills of the whale but to further support that regardless of age, the emotion of love, as demonstrated by partnering, is a necessity like that of love for nurturing when young.  The emotion of love is not defined by the age of the recipient or the age of the admirer.

Doyle does not limit his discussion to the ability of non-humans to love, but includes a reminder to how fragile the emotion of love is and how quickly love can be lost. Doyle provides examples of what happens when relations are challenged; for one, he presents what happens to the hummingbird and the challenge it faces for survival. The hummingbird may die when it gets too cold or even comes to rest. The metabolic rate and the temperature of the bird’s tiny heart are a delicate balance. This can be applied to humans as well, if we do not have healthy relationships that allow us to be loved or to love we will not survive. In the last paragraph of the text, Doyle reminds the reader of the many times that love is experienced from an hour, a moment, a day, to a lifetime. As a reader, each individual person is exposed to different relationships and each takes a risk to love one another. Doyle reinforces that without the emotion of love one could not survive as stated, “we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart.” (96) Lastly, the author emphasizes that even if one tries to avoid the emotion of love or to protect themselves from the pain of losing love, it will always find one’s vulnerability. To summarize the value of love for both human and non-humans, Doyle describes, “Unicellular bacteria have no hearts at all, but even they have fluid eternally in motion, washing from one side of the cell to the other, swirling and whirling. No living being is without interior liquid motion. We all churn inside.” (96) Thus there are no boundaries for the ability to love or the amount of love we can endure. Love is limitless, Doyle wants the reader to understand that the emotion of love may come and go. Relationships with different people will include love while at other times that same love may be lost. The loss of love may result from something as simple as dying, or as complex as changing circumstances.  

By focusing on the biological aspects of animals versus humans, Doyle is able to transcend the stereotype of love, showing the limitless values love possesses. Love can be identified by typical attributes like happiness, trust, and endearment; but as Doyle has proven it can also be represented in more physical descriptions. His descriptions of the all the different aspects of the heart can be compared to the list of emotions that define love that are listed in Corinthians, Chapter 13. Doyle writes this love poem to enhance the value of love without using the commonly applied characteristics. 