At first glance of “Joyas Valdores”, the essay written by Brian Doyle, one might believe it is merely an informative essay on the anatomy of hummingbirds. Especially since he uses a different name for the hummingbird (Joyas Valdores) as the title of the essay. But after further interpretation and analysis, it becomes easier to see that Doyle uses the hummingbirds and their extremely fast beating heats to show the reader how fragile and beautiful life is. His usage with the key concept of the anatomy of the hummingbird and his constant references to it, is to get his point across that life is too short for people to rush right through it without enjoying the gift of life. 

Without even hesitating Brian Doyle starts off by getting the reader thinking. But not just about anything. With his first sentence he asked the reader to “consider the humming bird for a long moment” (Hayden-McNeil, 94). In order for him to get his point across with his essay he had to first set the path in which he wanted his reader’s minds to follow. Because what is a better way to help someone understand a concept than to personally push it right into their heads. Furthermore, Doyle continues on about these “flying jewels”, as he calls them in the first paragraph of his essay. He gives background after background of seemingly useless information about hummingbirds, unless of course you were writing a biology report on the history of the species. But he then takes the turn he was building up for when he says “their hearts hammering faster than we would clearly hear if we pressed our elephantine ears to their infinitesimal chests” (Hayden-McNeil, 94). This sentence alone completely switches the dynamic of the piece. It moves the reader’s thought process away from pure information towards the feeling of how precious and tiny these hummingbirds are. 

Doyle goes on even more about a day in the life of a hummingbird. From visiting a thousand flowers a day to the capabilities of flying backwards, and even flying more than five hundred miles without even having to stop for a little rest. But once again, when the reader thinks he has Brian Doyle figured out, he turns the thought process again. His next sentence in the essay is this;” But when they come to rest the come close to death: on frigid nights, or when they are starving, the retreat into torpor, their metabolic rate slowing to a fifteenth of their normal sleep rate, their hearts sludging nearly to a halt, barely beating, and if they aren’t soon warmed their hearts grow cold, and they cease to be” (Hayden-McNeil, 95). Throughout his whole essay that very long sentence is the biggest change in the reader’s thought process that Doyle manufactures. Before that, everything he said about the hummingbird was pleasant, giving them a since of beauty and freedom, until Doyle turns the wheel entirely. Now, he is starting to make his point. Doyle is continuously using the instances and descriptions of the hummingbird to control the reader’s thought process. With the mood changing to a little more real, the reader starts to get the feeling of how fragile the hummingbirds can be.

The next topic or concept Doyle focuses on is in his next paragraph. He moves back to the pure anatomy of the hummingbird, focusing mainly on the structure of and difficulties faced by the heart of a hummingbird. At this point in the essay Brain Doyle goes on to explain nearly everything about a hummingbird’s heart starting with, “they have race-car hearts that eat oxygen at an eye-popping rate” (Hayden-McNeil, 95). He explains how the life of a hummingbird outs an extreme amount of stress and weight on a heart, resulting in more heart attacks, aneurysms, and ruptures than any other animal on the planet. The price of the lifestyle in which the hummingbird lives is living a life closer to death, no matter how you look at it. Doyle does an excellent job of using the troubles hummingbirds face to furthermore get his point across about enjoying the life we have. Especially when he says, “Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats in a lifetime. 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” (Hayden-McNeil, 95). Doyle is basically offering up an ultimatum to the reader, helping them to understand why he wrote this essay. He is saying that if you live the lifestyle of a hummingbird, life will come and go in the blink of an eye. But if you live like a turtle savoring every second of the life you live it will feel as though it lasts longer. 

With that ultimatum, Brian Doyle offers the reader a choice. To either live like a turtle or like a hummingbird, because it is ultimately the reader’s choice for which path he shall take for the rest of his life. All Doyle can do is give it his best shot to shove his wisdom into the minds of his readers. Through his consistent mood changes and the continuous instances of the internal sciences of the hummingbird, he did just that. Brian Doyle has carved a path of thinking into his reader’s minds in order for them to understand his point of view.
