Brian Doyle’s prose poem, “Joyas Volardores,” exposes the harsh reality of love’s suffering through the use of various animal hearts, both human and nonhuman. The hummingbird, for instance, was originally given the name “joyas valadoras,” which means “flying jewels,” by the first White explorers in the Americas (Doyle 94). Doyle opens his essay with a description of the hummingbird’s heart. He also, later on, writes in great detail about tortoise, blue whale, and human hearts. The final paragraph of the piece pulls all of the writer’s examples together in order to prove his claim. In “Joyas Volardores,” Doyle draws conclusions between the pain suffered by animal and human hearts, and this is significant because it illustrates an interconnectedness between of all forms of life.

Doyle uses figurative language with intentions to express that animals and humans relate in many ways. He selects hummingbirds and blue whales as the central nonhuman animals for this piece. Hummingbirds and blue whales possess qualities that make them extremely different, both from each other and from the majority other creatures. Hummingbird hearts are the size of a pencil eraser, and the blue whale has the largest heart, “as big as a room” (Doyle 94-95). The descriptions of these creatures are very detailed, and these two specific metaphors elaborate upon that size does not matter. Hummingbirds have “incredible enormous immense ferocious metabolisms” and “race-car hearts that eat oxygen at an eye-popping rate” (Doyle 95). The lack of punctuation in the first quote mirrors the physiology of the hummingbird. Also, Doyle personifies the heart of the hummingbird in the second quote in order to emphasize the speed in which it operates. His writing style is composed of many unique choices, such as varied sentence structures, which allow the reader to gain a strong understanding of why people are meant to live and feel very deeply. He writes, “it’s expensive to fly. You burn out. You fry the machine. You melt the engine” (95). By breaking apart these ideas into choppy sentences, Doyle emphasizes the idea that life is short and must be lived in the moment. 

When Doyle discusses animal hearts, he focuses on love and also fear of death, but when he transitions into writing about humans, he encompasses a wide range of other emotions. Doyle writes, “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). The heartbreak experienced by humans sets them apart from other animals. In this quote, the repetition of “and” separates the adjectives and shows how one can build a wall around their heart, brick by brick, but then it can come crashing down rather quickly. One has to keep moving forward despite all of the heart-wrenching pain they have experienced in the past. 

Doyle parallels literal functions of hearts with their figurative significance. Doyle writes, “if they are not soon warmed, if they do not soon find that which is sweet, their hearts grow cold, and they cease to be” (95). Referencing hummingbird hearts, Doyle implies that hearts need both love and physical warmth. The hearts of the hummingbirds serve as a representation of all hearts. As for blue whales, “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). Doyle includes this quote because it shows how blue whales crave companionship. Not only do whales literally have big hearts, but also have a lot of love to give. Symbolic meanings of hearts in Doyle’s essay are different from their literal sense, and Doyle implements these double meanings in order to prove that all creatures, including humans, feel both love and pain.

In “Joyas Volardores,” Doyle describes the hearts of different forms of life, starting from large mammals and going all the way down to the smallest bacteria, in order to explain that all life is connected. The poet identifies the amount of chambers in the hearts of mammals and birds, reptiles and turtles, fish, insects and mollusks, worms, and even unicellular bacteria (96). Doyle makes it very evident that he is not referring to the hearts of just hummingbirds and blue whales. He writes, “every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend 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” (95). Here, Doyle draws all of his previous ideas together by introducing a choice of how one can live their life. Also, he reemphasizes that his essay is ultimately about all animal hearts, not solely hummingbird, blue whale, and human hearts. This piece displays the interconnectedness of life through descriptions of hearts.

He shifts, at the end, to describing solely human hearts. Doyle writes, “so much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one in the end” (96). This essay encompasses the idea that in the end, everyone is alone. Nobody can rely on others for happiness because it must come from within. One needs to be happy with themselves and not lean on others for happiness. As humans, “we open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart” (Doyle 96). This powerful message means that humans fail to give away their heart fully. Humans build a wall up around their heart with a few windows, but they rarely let anyone in.

Doyle writes that one’s wall protecting their heart falls by, “a woman’s second glance, a child’s apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother’s papery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father’s voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children” (96). These brief moments in life are significant because they seem to be so insignificant, yet they have the power to change someone’s life or trigger a memory or emotion they have long forgotten. Through implementing these human experiences and earlier on, including nonhuman experiences as well, Doyle is suggesting that emotional life is common among all living creatures. The attitude of the author gives substance to the claim that heartbreak doesn’t make one stronger because it’s a natural feeling and experience of all living creatures, whether referring to physical or emotional harm to the heart.

The connection and truth behind the pain of love experienced by all creatures is captured in Doyle’s short essay, “Joyas Volardores”. One cannot escape the emotions felt after reading the final paragraph in this powerful piece. True love exists in spite of pain and heartbreak, but humans need to build a door for entry to the walls around their heart. One isn’t destined to close their heart out, especially to the little things that make life worth it. In conclusion, all forms of life do in fact grasp the concept of pain, love, and suffering.