
After close reading Brian Doyle’s “Joyas Volardores” I noticed several key things. Throughout the writing, Doyle explains animal hearts in a way that makes me think of how the human heart works. That was his goal in this essay, to start off in a scientific way and change the tone of the essay completely towards the end. He doesn’t begin to discuss the human heart until the final paragraph but that is where the real topic of the essay is His style of writing is very curt and he uses many short simple sentences. He also uses almost no conjunctions or long sentences excluding when he listed off all the types of hummingbirds and in the final paragraph about human hearts. The passage builds on itself constantly from beginning to end but in its own strange, choppy way. 

The most distinct characteristic about this passage is how incredibly short and simple the sentences are, excluding a few distinct examples. For example, the first 3 sentences are each around 7 words and very short and simple. This simplistic pattern continues throughout most the essay. When describing how amazing hummingbirds are Doyle states, “Each one visits a thousand flowers a day. They can dive at sixty miles an hour. They can fly backwards.” (Doyle 95) I believe that the author wrote like this on purpose so he could force the reader to read his story a certain way and to affect the tone of the story, and he does that incredibly well. If he had written the essay in the more commonly used style of longer and more complex sentences, then the effect on the reader would have been completely different. It wouldn’t have had nearly as much influence or power. The only example of when Doyle doesn’t use these short choppy sentences when he asks the audience to consider all the dead hummingbirds, which is a significant, sad, and powerful idea, and when he talks about our human hearts. 

Doyle talks about hearts in a unique way. He uses actual scientific facts and ideas about animals to talk about emotions of the human heart. For example, he says, “Every creature has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend the 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) That is a real fact but it doesn’t really make anyone think of an animal’s average lifespan. It encourages a reader to think of how they’re spending their heartbeats. It makes a reader think about if they’re going to burn out like a hummingbird or take it slow like the tortoise. Doyle told us readers a real fact about two animals, but made us question how we are all living our life. Maybe someone lives life on the edge and does lots of extreme sports but dies at 40. However, maybe someone lives a peaceful slow paced life as an accountant and dies at 100. It is very likely that both lived happy lives and were perfectly content despite totally different ways of living. 

Doyle’s essay starts off very specific, just listing off facts about hummingbirds. He most likely does this to try to bring the reader in and generally changes from insignificant but interesting facts about hummingbirds to deep topics about the human heart. This is a key stylistic choice that effects the whole tone of the essay. He initially talks solely about scientific facts regarding a hummingbird heart but then later continues to talk about the human heart and how it can be affected by the cooing of a baby or a cat with a broken spine crawling into the woods to die. He moves from very specific facts to very general sayings about the human heart and life.  

Doyle’s word choice is very important to the overall tone of the essay. For most of the essay he uses scientific language but when talking about how huge a blue whale is he says, “It is waaaaay bigger than your car.” (Doyle 95) For an essay that uses big scientific words like “infinitesimal, elephantine, and mitochondria” this is a huge change. He perhaps did this because at this point in the essay he is really moving away from hummingbird facts and into deep emotional statements about the human heart. 

The main point of this passage is obviously not to tell the reader about the size of a hummingbird or blue whales heart, it is to make the reader think about their own heart. The writer says that, “No living being is without interior liquid motion. We all churn inside.” (Doyle 96) He says this to give a reason about talking about even though all these animals have different hearts, they all work basically the same way. They all churn. Everyone in the world knows that feeling. Everyone in the world has had their emotions rocketed to new heights and had them crash to new lows. This passage says how everyone’s heart is bruised and scarred and scored and torn. It says that you can build your heart up as taught and hard and cold and you want, but it will all come down when you see something happy or sad. For five out of six paragraphs of this essay Doyle talked about animal hearts and never once mentioned a human’s heart, but for all the essay he was leading up to the final paragraph where he says statements that truly apply to every reader. 

Doyle wrote this essay in a very unique way. It starts off scientific by using words like elephantine and infinitesimal. However, he writes in a very short a choppy way and only uses long sentences at two key points to make them stand out more. For almost all the essay Doyle talks about the human heart, but he never actually even mentions the human heart until the last paragraph. Doyle used key words to make certain points in the essay stand out or transition the tone from more scientific too more general and emotional. The author wrote this essay to talk to the reader about his or her heart. He does it in a very backwards and unique way, but also a very effective one. 