
The heart is an integral piece of a creature that determines its life span, pace, and purpose in life. The heart drives a creature. In “Joyas Valordores”, Brian Doyle discusses hearts of hummingbirds, whales, and humans, using sentence structure, vivid imagery, and contrast to convey life messages.

The hummingbird is a metaphor for living life too quickly. This pace of this section accelerates to breakneck speeds because of repetition and many short sentences followed by one long one, reflecting the immensely fast life of the hummingbird. Doyle establishes the heart motif in the first sentence, comparing the hummingbird’s heart to “a pencil eraser” that beats ten times a second, while also establishing the hummingbird’s tininess. He goes on to say that, like other birds, hummingbirds have “incredible enormous immense ferocious metabolisms” that require a lot of oxygen, as well as energy. Unfortunately, with a heart beating nine times faster than a human, hummingbirds “suffer more heart attacks and aneurisms and ruptures than any other living creature”. Every day is survival for a hummingbird; either their heart will give out, or they will not collect enough nectar to continue fueling their “race-car” heart. All creatures have about two billion heartbeats to beat within a lifetime, and hummingbirds spend them alarmingly quickly. Applying this to our own lives, we can see the hummingbird is a sad, yet beautiful creature, rapid-firing its heartbeats away, and constantly runs the risk of giving out. Do not be the hummingbird,  Doyle says, and slow down so that you can enjoy life. 

The whale is a message about the importance of community. Slowing down from the previous section, Doyle uses a more even sentence structure to accentuate the size of the Blue whale. Moving to the extremely large end of the ‘heart size’ spectrum, Doyle states that a the Blue whale has the largest heart in the world, weighing in at seven tons, and is “large as a room”. Next, he states that a Blue whale at birth is 20 feet long and 4 tons, but grows to a 100 feet. Blue whales are best known for two things: Being the largest creature on earth, and for their “penetrating moaning cries” in the deep. Not much else is known of the Blue whale, a fact Doyle is disappointed in. For a being so large, shouldn’t humanity know more about Blue whales? Paring down from Blue whales to hummingbirds, of which quite a lot is known, Doyle then compares the knowledge base to our own knowledge of our fellow humans and the world around us, and asks if we know anything about them. Continuing the question, we are commanded to go and discover our neighbors, our community, and our world. Even whales usually travel in groups of two. 

Shifting from literal to metaphorical, Doyle’s discussion on the state of the human heart cuts straight to the “heart” of the matter. The sentence structure is longer than the pretending paragraph, and repetition is used frequently, creating a  pounding and cutting feeling in the audience. For the last time, the figurative human heart is at first tender and sensitive, but exposure to the cruel world can leave us “bruised and scarred, scored and torn” from exposure. But isolating oneself  is not the solution; “you can brick up your heart as stout ant tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can, and down it comes in an instant.”. Doyle lists several things that can call the shattered human back into reality, from “a woman’s second glance” to “a cat with a broken spine dragging itself to the forest to die”, all quite vivid vignettes. Doyle shows us that even though we “live alone in the house of the heart”, our experiences and troubles all our own, community is still possible and encouraged.

The focus of the hearts of the great, small, and broken create a powerful emotional message that is crafted from varied sentence structure; fast pace for the hummingbird, slower for the whale, and long and cutting for the human heart, as well as vivid imagery to create the metaphors that are discussed through he various creatures. The hummingbird represents the dangers of living life too quickly, the whale represents the need to discover our surroundings, as well as others, and the figurative human heart is a message to not “become a rock” in the words of Simon and Garfunkel. Doyle weaves a tapestry of inspirational life messages with sentence structure, contrast, and vivid imagery, creating a relevant and memorable message that will hopefully be lived out. 
