In life there are messages that you don’t always see right away and the same can occur in writing but sometimes it’s intentional because the author really wants you to think about the points that they are trying to get across.  When reading Brian Doyle’s piece  “Joyas Volardores” the reader will notice there is a lot  of literary devices used to hide the real thoughts and messages he was trying to convey. By looking at irony, imagery, and pathos we can see the most important parts of the story that Doyle was trying to bring attention to. This is important because it draws the reader’s attention to certain parts of the story and helps them to better understand what the author is trying to get them to take away from their text. 

 The first device Doyle uses is irony. He describes the hummingbird and whales heart as simply what keeps them alive, but when he describes the heart of humans it’s different because it has nothing to do with how many heart beats we have or how big our hearts are, it’s more to do with the emotions we feel and experiencing everything life has to offer. Doyle says “So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment”(Doyle 96)  this is referring to emotions and the highs and lows that we feel, there are so many emotions that we feel as if we can’t keep up with all of them, but we can’t let that discourage us and hold on to the past, we have to keep moving forward. Another quote that stuck out was when Doyle said “ that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will…”(Doyle 96) when people go through things traumatic they feel sad and it can really scar them for life. Doyle is trying to get his readers to understand that life is hard and you will go through many obstacles and feel a lot of pain but you will get through it with time because not everything is permanent.

Doyle not only uses irony but he also uses imagery to describe how big the heart of a blue whale is. He describes the heart as being the size of a massive room that has four chambers and then goes on to say “ A child could walk around it, head high, bending only to step through the valves”(Doyle 95). This is important because it lets the reader really imagine the size of the heart and it makes it easier to understand what the author is describing and to make better sense of it. The use of imagery is very helpful throughout the whole fourth paragraph because Doyle describes the features of the heart so well that the reader can imagine themselves being in the heart and just seeing how big it is. By looking at imagery it makes the message of how powerful and big the heart it so clear and also keeps reader interested in the text. If Doyle wouldn’t have used imagery in his writing, then the reader would lose interest in continuing to read and the text wouldn’t have as much clarity on the size of the heart. 

The last device that Doyle used in his piece of work was pathos. The use of pathos helped the reader to understand Doyle’s emotional appeal. The short lived life of the hummingbird provokes both sadness and happiness. When Doyle is writing about the hummingbirds life he says “ 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”(Doyle 95). This quote can also be directly aimed towards humans because you have the choice on how you want to live your life, it can either be full of joy and happiness or you can be miserable all the time, Doyle is trying to relate the hummingbirds’ life on how he believes humans should live their lives. Another quote that stood out was “You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant”(Doyle 96) what Doyle is trying to get the reader to understand is that we can put up a shield against the pain and fear that we have but that won’t last very long because we are meant to experience those things. We will feel pain emotionally and physically but we can’t let that stop us because life gets hard a few times. We will move on from the sadness and pain that life put us through and when we do we will really see all the joy, love, and happiness that can be found in life.

In conclusion, Doyle’s use of irony, imagery, and pathos helped the reader to understand the meaning behind “Joyas Volardores”. Doyle’s use of these devices also helped for the reader to understand how fragile the heart is. The hummingbirds heart was the smallest heart in the world and the blue whales heart was the biggest in the world, but it’s also important to keep in mind that just because humans don’t have the smallest or biggest hearts, they go through a lot of emotional obstacles rather than physical ones. Doyle’s main message was that the heart is very powerful and important both physically and emotionally and that we have to live our life to the fullest that we can and not to take anything for granted.