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english essay about Joyas Voladoras by Brian Doyle....

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Khan Page 1 of 5 Mr. Blitz English 111 – 14554 2018 October 10 Joyas Voladoras by Brian Doyle. “Joyas Voladoras” is a story written by Brian Doyle that explains how life can be lived through multiple animals and different kinds of species. Doyle begins the story by talking about a hummingbird and connects a hummingbird’s heart to a whale and a human’s heart. The reason why Doyle seems to talk about the hearts these magnificent animals is because he is trying to convey how life is lived through these animals and what they go through, throughout their life time. Doyle seems convey a sense of realization of how precious life is and wants the reader to cherish life because life is short. Hummingbirds are magnificent creatures. Doyle begins this story to talk about a lot of the characteristics that hummingbirds have. A hummingbird’s heart is the size of an eraser, Doyle begins to talk about how almost all of the hummingbird is a hummingbird’s heart. Doyle seems to use the words Joyas Voladoras as a way to characterize and describe the hummingbirds, later on he goes to describe them as “flying Jewels” which is also what white explorers in America described them as because the hummingbirds were rare and very distant to the white explorers and how they have never seen them before, three hundred species of them just flying and whirring around and nowhere to be seen anywhere else in the universe. Doyle also mentions how hummingbirds visit a thousand flowers a day and begins to describe the physical capabilities of hummingbirds. Hummingbirds can dive at sixty miles an hour, they can also fly backwards.

Khan Page 2 of 5 Doyle also mentions the metabolism of hummingbirds and says how the hummingbirds come close to death when they rest. He also begins to talk about how life would be spent as hummingbirds because of their short life span. Doyle begins to describe a blue whale’s heart once he finishes talking about hummingbirds. The biggest heart in the world is inside a blue whale, it weighs more than seven tons and it is as big as a room. Doyle mentions how big a blue whale can be and compares its size to a room. He uses imagery and mentions how it’s size can be so big that a child can walk around in it, head high. When a blue whale is born it is twenty feet long and weighs up to four tons, it’s only a mere child and Doyle mentions that its already bigger than your car. A baby blue whale drinks a hundred gallons of milk from its mother every day, a baby blue whale also gains about two hundred pounds a day. Doyle then mentions how after seven to eight years after hitting puberty it disappears from humans and forms a life on its own and nothing is really known about the blue whale after that. We never get to see how a blue whale finds a mate or its social life. There are perhaps over ten thousand blue whales in the world, living in every ocean on earth, and of the largest mammal who ever lived yet we know nearly nothing about these wonderful creatures. Doyle then goes onto mention the few things we do know about them, these animals with the biggest hearts generally travel in pairs. Their penetrating moaning cries and yearning can be heard underwater for miles and miles. The reason why Doyle digs into a hummingbird’s characteristics and function was because he wanted the reader and the audience to understand what the life of a hummingbird is like compared to other animals. Doyle wants the reader to understand the perspective of a hummingbird and wants the reader to use its imagination and to imagine what life is like as a

Khan Page 3 of 5 hummingbird every day. Doyle mentions in paragraph two, line one,” Each one visits a thousand flowers a day. They can dive at sixty miles an hour. They can fly backward. They can fly more than five hundred miles without pausing to rest.” This shows us how Doyle wants the reader to use its imagination and to picture what it’s like living as a hummingbird every day. Doyle also uses metaphorical language when describing the characteristic of a hummingbird and wants the reader to be amazed on what a hummingbird can do because of its size. Doyle mentions in paragraph one, line three,” A hummingbird’s heart is the size of a pencil eraser. A hummingbird’s heart is a lot of the hummingbird”. In this line, Doyle seems to compare a hummingbird’s heart to an eraser which are both tiny things and seems to use metaphoric language when comparing the two. Later, Doyle goes on to mention in paragraph two, line fourteen that,” each thunderous wild heart the size of an infant’s fingernail”. Doyle again, is mentioning that a hummingbird’s heart is the size of a fingernail. When talking about a blue whale, Doyle seems to use anatomy to describe a whale’s heart. When Doyle begins to talk about the whales he begins to describe its heart as the biggest in the world, even as big as a room. In paragraph four, line two Doyle says,” 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 in a saloon”. Doyle seems to be using a metaphor to convey how a child can run across just the heart of the whale. The reason why Doyle is comparing a blue whales heart to the size of the room is because he wants the reader to be amazed on how big a blue whale is, he seems to be talking about how a child could walk across a whale’s heart because that heart is as big as a room.

Khan Page 4 of 5 Doyle also goes onto link species of animals into chambers. According to Doyle,” Mammals and birds have hearts with four chambers. Reptiles and turtles have hearts with three chambers. Fish have hearts with two chambers. Insects and mollusks have hearts with one chamber. Worms have hearts with one chamber, although they may have as many as eleven single- chambered hearts”. Doyle also goes on to mention Unicellular bacteria and adds on that they have no hearts at all. Doyle begins to end the story by talking about life. Doyle wants the reader to understand how precious life is. Whether you’re a hummingbird or a blue whale, Doyle wants the reader to value life. Doyle goes on to say in the last paragraph, line one,” 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 not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each, but we live alone in the house of the heart”. Doyle is mentioning that throughout all our lives we never seem to open to anyone and keep stuff to ourselves almost our entire lives. Doyle also is hitting an emotional aspect in the story where he’s conveying how precious life is and how every single moment in our life is important. He also goes on to talk about how over time as we age and become older our fragile hearts begin to bruise and damage and they can only be healed by the force of another character. This means that there is someone to love out there who can care for us and heal our hearts and give us peace. On a final note, the reason why Doyle seems to mention an animal like a hummingbird and a blue whale is because a hummingbird is a very small creature compared to a blue whale. Doyle wants the reader to first read about an animal who’s very small and has a heart that’s the size of an eraser. He also goes on and talks about what a hummingbird does every day and how it comes close to death if it slows down. Once he finishes he moves on and talks about the biggest

Khan Page 5 of 5 species of animal which is the blue whale. Just the heart of a blue whale is about the size of a room where a child could run across head high. Doyle then goes on and talks about how whales live to be about a hundred years and mentions the fact that after puberty very little is known about the blue whale....