
Whether they admit it or not, everyone craves affection, its a part of human nature. In Brian Doyle’s Joyas Voladores, he explores this idea multiple times in the piece. He uses different analogies and metaphors to describe the idea of how every human has a longing for emotional connections. By the end of the piece it is apparent that Doyle’s message to the reader is that everyone longs for love and the ability to share emotions, even if it is alway apparent.

In order to find love and emotional connection, one must first have love to give. Doyle wants the reader to know that in order to find love, one must be willing to give love too. In one section of the piece Doyle writes about the blue whale and its mating process (Doyle 95-96). He references how little we know about whales and how large their hearts are. When talking about the whales Doyle uses the phrase “the largest hearts travel in pairs”. He uses this phrase to go off of his first point of how little we know about whales and to state that although we know very little about the largest animal on the planet, we still know that they travel in pairs and mate. This phrase also has another metaphorical meaning, while Doyle is literally referencing whales, he is also referencing humans, the “largest hearts” is a reference to people who have the most love to give. And those who have the most love to give generally travel in pairs, meaning that they tend to find love the easiest. Doyle then goes on to describe the mating calls that the whales make. Doyle writes “their penetrating moaning cries, their piercing yearning tongue can be heard underwater for miles and miles”, he writes this to show how whales long for companionship just as humans do. Doyle includes the entire whale reference as an analogy for humans and how they long for companionship, even if it isn't apparent. Just as we may not know much about the blue whale, we do know that they long for companionship. Just as whales have the largest hearts and travel in pairs, humans who have the most love to give generally find love more easily.

Just as the largest hearts in the world travel in pairs, So do humans with the largest amounts of love to give. Doyle begins to talk about the heart because he believes it is the metaphorical place that love stems from. He begins to talk about the openness of the human heart, he says “We are utterly open with no one in the end, not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend” (Doyle 96).  It is apparent that Doyle is trying to make the point that we as humans are alone with our feelings. Doyle puzzles the reader by giving list of people such as mothers and fathers, children, and friends, that most readers generally feel that they share feelings and emotions with. But Doyle wants to make it clear that we are strictly alone with these feelings. Doyle then continues to say “we open windows to each other but we live alone in the house of the heart” (Doyle 96). Doyle is again trying to show that we are alone with our emotions and we do not let anyone in. he uses the phrase “open windows” to show to show how we have transparency towards others and how we can see ones emotions like you can see through a window. But we do not share emotions, Doyle states that we “live alone in the house of the heart”. “The House of the heart” is a metaphorical place where our emotions are kept. He wants the reader to understand that while we may be able to see each others emotions through the “windows”, we do not share the emotions because we are alone in the “house of the heart”.we may long for interaction and companionship,  and we may actually find someone whose “windows” we can see through and feelings we can see. Doyle uses these ideas of seeing through others “windows” while being alone in the house of the heart to show further his idea to the reader that every human is longing for emotional connections, in order to fill the void in the “house of the heart” and find someone to share them with.

Because humans long for emotional connections, we are also are vulnerable to being emotionally hurt. Doyle begins to describe how we protect our emotions from being hurt or taken advantage of . He decides to describe this because he wants the reader to understand how vulnerable most people are. In one instance he writes “Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked for fear of a constant harrowed heart” (Doyle 96). Doyle uses the word “naked” to describe vulnerability when it comes to human emotions. He also uses the phrase “a constantly harrowed heart” to portray reiterate the feeling of being vulnerable and having ones feelings and emotions taken advantage of. He then goes on to describe how we protect our vulnerable emotions “You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and it comes down in an instant” (Doyle 96). He uses this list of hard adjectives  such as “tight” and “cold” to describe to the reader how we as humans try to protect our emotions and not let anyone know the feelings that we have inside ourselves. He is trying to make the point that we do not want others to know about our longing for an emotional connection because humans can feel vulnerable.  But then he goes on to say “it comes down in an instant”. He includes this phrase to show that no matter how hard we try to hide our longing for an emotional connection,  no matter how much we as humans try to protect our emotional vulnerability. We are still vulnerable and we still long for that emotional connection, and there is no way of hiding it.

In this piece, dose uses various metaphors and pieces of descriptive language to describe human hearts. But the deeper meaning behind the description of human hearts is human emotions. Doyle try to make the point that every human has a longing for love and emotional connections, and no matter how hard that longing for emotional connection will come out no matter how hard you try to hide it.
