The hummingbird is an interesting specimen to examine for a few reasons. The author Brian Doyle makes various claims about the hummingbird throughout the passage. Doyle challenges the reader from the very first sentence to expand their mind and think hard about the points he is trying to make throughout the passage.  He starts by referencing the hummingbird as the flying jewels of the Americas which I thought was really interesting. I actually didn’t know that hummingbirds came exclusively from the Americas. The author begins to talk about the heart of the hummingbird which becomes the main focus of the passage. The hummingbird is interesting because of how small it is. Yet it is vital to life as it pollenates flowers and allows plants and animals to grow healthy and strong. The hummingbirds heart is the size of a pencil eraser yet the small creature can fly five hundred miles without stopping. This is a lot of stress to be put on such a small being. One would wonder how its little body can withstand such physical exhaustion. This would result in the fact that hummingbirds have more heart attacks and ruptures than any other creature. If you can imagine any time in your life where you felt stressed or anxious just imagine what a hummingbird feels every single day. 

Doyle transitions from an animal with the smallest heart to a creature with the largest heart in nature, that being the blue whale. This is an important comparison because it contrasts two opposite sides of life. A hummingbird who is no bigger than your hand and a blue whale who is the largest animal in the ocean. I love the way the author uses imagery to illustrate the vastness of the blue whale’s heart. “It’s as big as a room. It is a room, with four chambers. A child could walk around in it, head high, bending only to step through the valves. The valves are as big as the swinging doors of a saloon.” This is a beautiful mind picture created by the specific words the author uses. I close my eyes and imagine myself as a young boy walking throughout the heart of the blue whale. Walls of red surround me and I understand why that large of a heart is necessary for such a majestic creature. The author uses words like the swinging doors of a saloon on purpose because they are easily recognizable and most people know what that looks like without having to think about it too much. He could have used any sort of measurement to describe the valves of the heart but the swinging doors of a salon seemed to resonate with him as he was composing this piece. Doyle references that we know next to nothing about the blue whale besides their size, mating habits and their distinct cry which can be heard from miles underneath the sea. Blue whales are found in all oceans all over the globe, but hummingbirds are only found in north and south America. I found this point interesting mostly due to the fact that we know very little about the blue whale although it is apparently present in every ocean. How can something so massive be so sneaky at the same time. Yet everyone has seen a hummingbird before even though they are so small and fast. I highly doubt however that anyone has seen a blue whale in person. How could that be? With a cry so loud and a body so large how have they not been spotted by more people? The vastness of earth’s oceans plays into the reasoning behind that question. A hummingbird can only fly so high in the atmosphere before it must come back down, and at that point it can almost always be spotted from someone on the ground. That is not the case with the blue whale at all. It is highly unlikely that a blue whale would come anywhere close to shore making it unable to be seen by humans. The blue whale would rather stay in deeper waters where it has room to roam free. Its heart bigger than the cars we drive weighing seven tons. Where our hearts are the size of a fist and may weigh a few pounds. So the animals with the largest hearts in the world mostly travel in pairs for most of their lives. A loving bond between two behemoths that would seem to last a lifetime. If that is the case, then why is it so hard for humans to stay with one person forever. Does the heart do more than just pump blood or does it carry a capacity for love as well? Sure humans are capable of being with one person for their entire life but it is extremely uncommon in our society.

After comparing the blue whale to the hummingbird in the first few paragraphs Doyle elaborates on the human hearts as well as the human condition. In his final paragraph he talks about how easily a heart can be broken. “No matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. 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, felled 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.” An essential organ only lesser to the brain that gives the gift of live to an organism can be so easily destroyed by powerful gestures and words. Just a simple look by a beautiful woman can bring a strong man with a healthy heart to his knees. The loss of a loved one can leave one’s heart broken and empty; at the same juncture a new spark of love can fill one’s heart with joy. Doyle again uses very specific examples and imagery to prove his points. Although this is a short reading he chooses his words very carefully which is what gives it so much meaning. A writer could produce pages and pages of lengthy metaphors about the heart and its purpose giving it the same effect as this passage. In five paragraphs Brian Doyle forces the reader to think critically about the heart the purpose it serves in human society. To prove the hearts worth as a symbol for humans he uses animals to make strong arguments. What I appreciate about this piece is that there are no wasted lines and the words seem to grab the reader as they flow from the paper. This makes the reading easy to follow and understand as you walk through the house of the heart as Doyle says.