In “Joyas Volardores”, by Brian Doyle, he talks about the heart in many different ways in order to get to one main idea he is trying to get across. He goes into many facts about the physical aspects of the heart and how it functions to keep different animals and humans alive. These details seem as if he is just giving us random information, but they all come together in the end to have a deeper meaning. The facts he tells are essential to getting to his main idea of living your life to the fullest and not being afraid to take chances or risk getting hurt.

In the first instance of the heart being mentioned he says, “A hummingbird’s heart beats 10 times a minute” (Doyle 94). In this instance of the heart being mentioned, he is describing it only on a physical level. He tells various facts such as its size and how it functions in in the hummingbird’s body. In the beginning of the piece, it seems as though he is simply just informing us of basic facts with no deeper meaning to them. In this paragraph, he also states how fast the hummingbird’s metabolism is, due to their fast heart rate, and how that allows rest and lack of food to be difficult for them and even cause death. “But when they rest they come close to death: on frigid nights, or when they are starving they retreat into torpor, their metabolic rate slowing to a fifteenth of their normal rate, their hearts slowing nearly to a halt, barely beating” (Doyle 95). He goes more in depth about this fact because he is trying to get the message across that speeding through your life too fast and never really stopping to enjoy a moment can cause your life to fly by before you can really get a chance to enjoy it. 

In the next instance that the heart is mentioned he is talking about the heart of a whale, which is an extremely larger heart than the previously mentioned hummingbirds. He starts off describing the heart of the whale the same way he did with the hummingbird. So, it is another instance when he is thinking of the heart in the way it physically works and functions in the animal. However, the descriptions of the two animals become different when he goes into the incredibly large size of the whale’s heart. In this instance he says that, “we know this: the animals with the largest hearts in the world generally travel in pairs” (Doyle 96). In this line he is describing it in a way that was different than just informing us about the physical usage of the heart. In this line he is comparing the sizes of different animal’s hearts to say that those with a bigger heart, in the sense of being more caring, will be accompanied by others throughout their lives and will live longer and happier ones because of it. 

The final instance that he mentions the heart, he uses a human heart instead of an animal. In this instance he gets deeper into the emotional aspect of the heart. He says, “We open up windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart” (Doyle 96). He is now using the heart as a symbol of the emotions we as humans experience, especially through heartbreak. Heartbreak is a main theme in the message he is trying to get across, and we can see evidence of that by his use of words like, “harrowed heart” and “scored and torn”. In this context the heart is not just a physical thing that pumps blood to keep us alive, but is also a chamber that hold all of our feelings, desires and pain. This idea can be interpreted from the text because he is comparing it to a house by saying that you can build up all the walls you want to try to protect your heart, as if it were your home or your life, but it is inevitable that you will end up disappointed and heartbroken at different points during your life. 

In conclusion, Doyle talks about the heart in various different contexts such as how it keeps us alive and how it makes suffer feelings of heartbreak. The use of animal hearts in the beginning of the piece compared to the use of human hearts in the end shows us the comparison of how humans feel emotions differently than anyone or anything else. He starts off by describing the animal’s hearts to show how different we are than any other living things on the planet and how powerful that really is.  The main idea from the essay was that we must live life completely and not try to put up walls to protect ourselves. The different uses of the heart tell us that we shouldn’t go through life to fast, or too slow, or too cautious. He is trying to tell us to live life to the fullest and be fearless because it is worth it in the end.