substantial meaning through symbolic creatures like the hummingbird and other species of animals. Doyle begins to develop his message with a close examination of the physical stamina and the heart of a hummingbird. However, shortly after this descriptive introduction of the prose-poem, the reader will realize the purpose of the work is not the anatomy of the hummingbird species. Doyle’s main focal point is to discuss how the use of the hummingbird relates to the message of the prose-poem: the human heart. The author creates a piece of artwork that uses the physical analysis of the hummingbird and the comparison of hummingbird to mammal, and mammal to human hearts to examine the raw human heart and the emotions, specifically love, that absorb and manipulate it. 

Doyle utilizes the physical anatomy of a hummingbird, along with his own unique writing style, to introduce and explain the central message. The writer discusses hummingbirds as if he is admiring from a distance, naming them “joyas voladoras”, or  “flying jewels.” A quote 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. The significance of this gap suggests the superior capability of human being’s ability to hold emotions over the hummingbird’s ability. 

Doyle emphasizes how rapidly hummingbird’s live their lives, 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. This writing style allows the reader to get mentally deeper into the text. 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” (95). Or in terms of human beings, rushing through life would be, for example,  forgetting to enjoy life and getting so caught up in the moment with everyday worries that before you know it, life will be coming to a close.

Doyle abruptly changes his subject from hummingbirds to blue whales to snap the reader’s attention to a different style of thinking for the same message. 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”), opposed to a hummingbird who can fly up to ninety feet per second (Kaplan). 

Doyle poses this thought in his prose-poem: “ . . . 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. According to the speculations of the author the hummingbird speeds through life. 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” (95). The writer insinuates that a hastened life does not truly have time to 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 (95), and the hummingbird weighing a mere average of two to six grams (National Geographic Society).  However, 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” (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. Doyle connects his conclusion with a quote from the beginning of the prose-poem referencing the hummingbird: “Their hearts are built of thinner, leaner fibers than ours. Their arteries are stiffer and more taut” (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,  . . .” (96). He uses similar descriptive words describing the physical hummingbird heart as he does when he describes the disadvantages and the downfall of the emotional human heart. This is where Doyle finally wraps up all of his comparisons and connects the hummingbird with the central message of his literary work. 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.   
