       The belief in love is a phenomenon that confuses many psychologist and sociologist. It is something that everyone wants to experience at least once in their lifetime, yet many never get to. Life is something everyone experiences, yet many people forget to actually live their life. In Brian Doyle’s prose poem, “Joyas Voladores”, Doyle repeats the word ‘heart.’ He states it mainly in reference to an animal’s actual heart, yet he also uses it as a symbol for love and life.

Doyle begins using the word heart when talking about a hummingbird. He starts by just listing out different facts about the hummingbird and the hummingbird’s heart. He states how its heart “beats ten times a second,” and he states that the hummingbird’s heart is only “the size of a pencil eraser” (pg.94). Doyle continues to list more facts about the hummingbird throughout the first two paragraphs of his work, yet in the second paragraph he talks about how slow their hearts can beat instead of how fast. He says things like, “their hearts sludging nearly to a halt,” and, “their hearts grow cold, and they cease to be” (pg.95). Doyle also talks about how the hummingbirds mostly spend their lives on their own, but this is not completely relevant to his argument until later in the poem. He concludes the second paragraph by saying, “each mad heart silent, a brilliant music stilled” (pg.95). At first, it is not clear as to what exactly Doyle is trying to say, because the first two paragraphs seem to just be facts about hummingbirds.

The third paragraph is where Doyle really starts to develop his argument about how the heart is a symbol for life. In the third paragraph, Doyle starts to mention how the hummingbird’s fast paced life takes a direct toll on its heart and body. Doyle states things like, “their hearts are stripped to the skin for the war against gravity,” and, “they suffer more heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures than any other living creature” (pg.95). This develops Doyle’s argument by showing that living life at a fast pace takes a great toll on a person or animal’s body. His final two statements in the third paragraph, “Every creature …, and live to be two years old,” (pg.95) present a second opinion on how a person can live their life. It presents the argument that people should slow their lives down, and they should take the time to enjoy the little things. The heart is a symbol for life because the quick paced heart of the hummingbird parallels with the a person who has a fast paced life. Doyle uses this parallel to show people that they shouldn’t just move through life as quick as they can. He also uses this to tell people that sometime the most beautiful things like a hummingbird can be the most fleeting so they should stop and enjoy them while they last. The first three paragraphs are mainly about how the heart is a symbol for life, whereas the next paragraph goes into how the heart is a symbol for love.

The fourth paragraph is when Doyle starts to present another step in his argument. He presents this by using the same method as the first two paragraphs, except he states facts about the blue whale. He starts by stating facts about how huge the blue whale’s heart is. He then goes on to talk about the way a blue whale is born, and how it stays with its mother for seven to eight years before it moves on. Doyle talks about the relationship between the blue whale and its mother to show people that they should stay with their family (or friends) for as long as they can and cherish that time. The main point of this next step in Doyle’s argument is finalized in the last statement of the paragraph, “But we know this… for miles and miles” (pg.96). This statement draws connection between the size of an animal’s heart and love. Doyle does this by stating how the blue whale always travels with a partner. The fact that the blue whale is never alone furthers Doyle’s argument that people shouldn’t go through life without someone beside them to help them along the way. 

The fifth paragraph is completely different than all the others. In this paragraph, Doyle states facts about hearts and not about a specific animal’s heart. He states things like, “Mammals and birds have hearts with four chambers,” and, “Worms have hearts with one chamber” (pg.96). At first this doesn’t seem to have any reference to his argument, but then Doyle adds in the last two statements, “No living being is without interior liquid motion. We all churn inside” (pg.96). These last two statements are put in place to make the fifth paragraph relevant to his argument to show that all organisms don’t have to have a heart, but all organisms have some type of liquid that pumps inside of them. Yet, Doyle still hasn’t finished his argument that the heart, or at least the pumping of liquid throughout a body, is a symbol for both life and love. 

The sixth and final paragraph finalizes Doyle’s argument. In this paragraph, Doyle talks about the heart as if it was its own object. In the last paragraph, Doyle says, “When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child” (pg.96). This was a way to show that all children believe in the fairytale, yet as we get older we stop believing in fairytales and start to build a wall around our hearts. Doyle then goes on to say, “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” (pg.96). Doyle uses this statement to further his argument that people do this to protect our hearts from the pain of love, yet no matter “how many bricks you bring to the wall” (pg.96) it can all come tumbling down in an instant. This last paragraph is where Doyle brings to life his theme on how the heart is not only a muscle, and an organ, pushing liquid through the body, but it is also the container that holds all the love someone will have in a lifetime.

Throughout the passage, Doyle leads up to his final argument. He did this by starting with the hummingbird. He talks about how it has the tiniest heart, and it virtually spends its whole life alone. Then he talks about the blue whale, which has the largest heart of all living creature, and it spends its whole life with another blue whale. A blue whale is never alone. Then we come to his last paragraph, which uses the word heart not in reference to an animal’s heart, but as its own object. He does this to show that the size of a creature's heart does not matter. The importance lies in what a creature does with their heart. Doyle uses the word heart twenty-eight times throughout this prose passage. His repetition of the word heart is to establish the heart as a symbol for life and love.
