meaning within the hummingbird, along with other species of animals. Brian Doyle begins this essay with a close examination of the physical stamina and heart of a hummingbird. However, shortly after this descriptive introduction of the essay, the reader will realize the essay is not focused on the anatomy of the hummingbird species, rather how the use of the hummingbird relates to the message of the essay and the main focal point: the human heart. The author creates a piece of artwork that uses the physical comparison of hummingbird, hummingbird to mammal, and mammal to human hearts to examine the raw human heart and the emotions that encompass and manipulate it. 

Brian Doyle utilizes the physical anatomy of a hummingbird, along with his own unique writing style, to introduce and explain the central message of his essay. The writer discusses and describes hummingbirds as if he is admiring from a distance, naming them “flying jewels.” A quote from the essay that exemplifies this distance is as follows: “ . . . their hearts hammering faster than we could clearly hear if we pressed our elephantine ears to their infinitesimal chests” (Doyle 94). Doyle utilizes the smallness of the hummingbird heart to the comparatively larger human ear to symbolize a vast gap and to create a feasible distance between the lives of hummingbird and human being in relation to emotional connections. Doyle emphasizes how rapidly hummingbird’s live their lives, subconsciously contrasting against human beings, by using words like “whirring”, “zooming”, “race-car”, and “eye-popping” to describe the actions of hummingbirds. The sensation a reader might feel while reading these descriptions could almost be interpreted as being rushed or hurried. The author intentionally creates this mood by alternating between short, choppy sentences and long, ongoing sentences while describing the hummingbird. The short and choppy style reflects the sudden jerks of a hummingbird’s flight pattern and the short amount of time they spend in one place. The long sentence style strings words together continuously to reflect the ongoing physical motion and activity of the hummingbird on a day to day basis. The main goal of the elaboration on the hummingbird’s rapid and fast paced lifestyle is to demonstrate how rushing through life will, as Brian Doyle quotes in the text, “fry the machine” (Doyle 95).

Brian Doyle abruptly changes his subject from hummingbirds to blue whales. The short, quick writing style paired with hummingbirds shift to lengthy descriptions of the heart of a blue whale, mimicking the blue whale’s slower paced motion. In fact, the blue whale swims about twelve miles an hour on average (“Blue Whale - Balaenoptera musculus”). This speed is opposed to a hummingbird who can fly up to ninety feet per second (Kaplan). Doyle poses this thought in his essay: “ . . . and of the largest animal who ever lived we know nearly nothing. But we know this: the animals with the largest hearts in the world generally travel in pairs, and their penetrating moaning cries, their piercing yearning tongue, can be heard underwater for miles and miles” (Doyle 95-96). The author points out that little knowledge circulates around the lives of blue whales, but a substantial amount is known about the hummingbird. This suggestion poses the idea that the heart with the ability to feel emotions deeper, referencing the blue whales who travel in pairs, is also the heart that is harder to understand and interpret by studies conducted by human beings. This is opposed to the comprehension of the hummingbird’s heart, due to Doyle providing a thorough physical description in the opening paragraph of his essay. According to the speculations of the author, in comparison to the blue whale, the hummingbird speeds through life. Brian Doyle quotes: “The price of their ambition is a life closer to death; they suffer more heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures than any other living creature” (Doyle 95). The writer insinuates that a hastened life does not truly feel emotions in the same respect that a tranquil life does. He portrays the hastened life through the hummingbird and the tranquil life through the blue whale, therefore creating a conventional visual for the symbolization of a functional emotional heart. 

The contrast between the blue whale and the human being is obvious in terms of physicality. Size comparison is what initially comes to mind, the blue whale weighing a whopping seven tons or larger (Doyle 95), and the hummingbird weighing a mere average of two to six grams (National Geographic Society).  However, Brian Doyle compares and connects not only the blue whale, but reptiles, worms, and fish to human beings by one simple, four worded sentence. “We all churn inside” (Doyle 96). Doyle symbolizes the cells and fluids of all living creatures into raw emotion, bridging the gap between the physical realm and the emotional realm and finally reaching his main point. Human beings are not hummingbirds. Human beings are not fast, fleeting, hurried creatures, nor have the proper anatomy to do so. Brian Doyle connects his conclusion with a quote from the beginning of the essay referencing the hummingbird: “Their hearts are built of thinner, leaner fibers than ours. Their arteries are stiffer and more taut” (Doyle 95). Doyle concludes with the quote:  “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). He uses similar descriptive words describing the physical hummingbird heart as he does when he describes the disadvantages and the downfall of the human heart. The author is trying to express the idea that a human being cannot harden their heart, like a hummingbird’s stiff arteries, to emotions; emotions constantly affected by the people and the world around them. 

Human beings share many similarities and mannerisms with birds and mammals. However, humans do not share the entire breadth of emotional capability with other living creatures. The human heart is subject to feeling passion, no matter the structure, and no matter how stiff the arteries. Physical structure in the human body does not have any control how a human being emotionally interacts with its counterpart, unlike the examples the author provided through the symbol of a hummingbird. In a bizarrely, methodical way, Brian Doyle relays this conclusion through the use of a hummingbird and a blue whale’s physical anatomy.   
