Brian Doyle begins his essay with “consider the hummingbird for a long moment,” followed by describing how the explorers in America called the little birds “Joyas Volardores”, meaning flying jewels. Doyle pays specific attention to the heart of the hummingbird, comparing it to the hearts of other animals, then to compare all of the hearts to the heart of a human. With use of dramatic and informal word choices as well as grammatically incorrect sentence structure, we can see how Doyle compares all of the hearts to express how important it is to spend the time one is given the best one can. 

The author uses overly animated word choices to emphasize the differences in his comparisons. Doyle calls human ears “elephantine” compared to the “infinitesimal” chests of the hummingbird that holds a heart that is the “size of a pencil eraser”. Doyle does not simply use words like small and large, or fast and slow. Doyle describes the pencil eraser heart as “hammering” inside the hummingbird’s chest, and it is Doyle’s use of overly embellished words that focus attention to compare and contrast the bird’s heart to its life. Despite how incredibly tiny the hummingbird is, it’s heart is working so hard a human’s large ears would not be able to differentiate the individual heart beats with how fast it is pounding at all times. Doyle then goes on to describe the bird as “whirring” and “zooming” as it visits a “thousand flowers a day” at “sixty miles an hour”, all specific details to express how much such the small creature with such a miniscule heart accomplishes in a day. Nighttime for hummingbird’s is “frigid” so their hearts “halt” to preserve energy, dramatizing the conditions such a tiny creature lives through to show how hard the heart has to work to stay alive during the two years a hummingbird has. 

Doyle compares the racing heart of the hummingbird with the short lifespan of two years to the heart of a tortoise who lives to be two hundred years old. Next the hummingbird’s heart is compared to that of the blue whale, an animal that has the biggest heart. Doyle describes a whale’s heart as being “as big as a room” a steep contrast to the heart of a hummingbird that is the size of a “pencil eraser”. These instances are used to contrast the “price of their ambition”, with nearly all creatures having two billion heartbeats in their lifetimes. The author stresses how “you” can spend them slowly like the tortoise, quickly like the hummingbird or mysteriously like the whale. The author specifically uses “you” as in to speak to the reader, drifting more from speaking about just animals and their hearts, to humans and how they spend their lives of two billion heartbeats.  

Along with his overly dramatic word usages, Doyle breaks the “typical” writer’s rules in regards to the formality of his words. It is his sporadic uses of informality throughout the work that contrasts to the scientific facts and seriousness of the message he is conveying. The contrasts between informal and formal highlights when the author does use informal words like “waaaaay” and “mama” as well as “unimaginable” to describe the whale and its size. The author uses “miles and miles” to describe the distance the whale travels instead of a more formal measurement. Doyle describes the hummingbird’s increase in mitochondria to sustain the hummingbird’s quicker heartbeat in great detail, an incredibly formal and scientific explanation compared to the rest of his essay. Doyle is trying to emphasize the importance of living life to the best of one’s ability in his writing by breaking standard rules in written English, as if to show through his writing how he has decided to use his two billion heartbeats, by challenging the societal norms. 

Continuing to break the standard rules of written English, Doyle uses excessive run-on sentences that double as lists. Doyle uses his lengthy lists to describe the condition of the hummingbird’s heart slowing in the cold with a list of chronological actions. He uses another list to describe the physical appearance of the hummingbird. Doyle continues to use lists to express how little is known about the whales listing details from travel patterns to social life to the “spirituality” and past “wars” of the blue whales. The details of human attributes lead to the assumption the lists are less about the animals mentioned and more about the reader, relating back to the importance of how one uses their time. 

In the last paragraph exclusively about humans, Doyle uses lists to describe the memories people could have throughout their lifetimes. Unlike with the animals, emotional and internal actions are being described. This contrasts with the external qualities and physical actions described of the birds and whales. Doyle uses the animals to show how much can happen in a lifetime, but to people what matters most in the end is the memories with other people. Doyle uses lists to describe hypothetical instances of childhood like skinned knees and gossip with best friends, your mother running her hand through your hair, or your father making you pancakes in the morning. Doyle specifically uses “you” in his lists to increase the emotional value of the childhood memories to show how much is “held in a heart in a lifetime”, meaning that the small “moments” in one’s life can carry with them forever. 

With Doyle’s use of dramatic word choices, informal word choices and sentence structure one can see the importance of using the heartbeats one has to live life to its full potential, to look back on a life filled with adventures with a best friend, your mother’s hand in your hair, and dad flipping pancakes in the morning. Doyle uses his specific word choices and lists to emphasize that despite how small the heart of a hummingbird is, it has so much living to get done in one day, because it only has two years. Humans, like all the other creatures only have two billion heart beats in their lifetime, and what holds with them forever is how they use this time they are given. Doyle specifically mentions memories with other people; friends, family, and loved ones because that is what sticks with people throughout their lives, and stays in their hearts.  
