Take a look at "Joyas Voladoras", by Brian Doyle. What do you notice about Doyle's writing? What happens when you reach the final paragraph? In what ways does an essay that at first appeared to be about creatures great and small suddenly turn into an essay about human nature? What has happened to the word heart? Do you thing "Joyas Voladoras" could be considered a personal essay, even and private one? How would you account for all the specific details that the author introduces in the concluding paragraph apparently to support a generalization about the human heart?
Use a quote from the essay to make your point.
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The descriptive qualities to Brian Doyle’s work are fascinating. He describes things you already knew about it such a beautiful manner It’s just, mesmerizing. When we are asked to reconsider the role and idea of the Hummingbird, we must all think for second about what we know about this creature. As Doyle begins to describe the facts we see that Humming birds are incredibly fast paced animals. They never stop for anything because that means death. They can fly more than 500 miles without a single rest; they also visit up to 1,000 flowers a day and most impressively they can dive at speeds up 60mph. He gives us very scientific facts about this animal leaving us to believe its just another scientific essay about the personality of a humming bird, but this isn’t the truth. Before the humming bird is brought to a close there is a statement bringing a tortoise next to a humming bird, it reads “now will you live your live like the tortoise and live for 200 years or you can spend them fast like the humming bird an live only two years. I consider this to be a very personal essay, a very vulnerable one. You have this man symbolically describing both Bird and Whale with very humanistic qualities, very reminiscent of human nature. Brain Doyle’s spares no detail when describing the blue whale his descriptive qualities make you feel as if you’ve just seen one the other day. This essay in the end makes you realize that life and living are a treasure, everyone posses but no one really understands it or uses it to their advantage.
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ReplyDeleteIn Brian Doyle’s essay Joyas Voladoras, first off starts talking about a humming bird heart and how it is small and beats very fast. And how if the humming bird slows down their heart comes to a halt and they die, if they’re not warmed soon. Then Doyle talks about a whale heart how it is the biggest heart in the world and how we nearly know nothing about whales but we do know that they travel in pairs and their cries can be heard from miles away. Then he talks about a human heart and pretty much says how we choose are heart and we choose to keep it keep it beating not anyone in our life reflects how we keep our lives going. We can either be the humming bird or the whale. “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.”
ReplyDeleteI think Doyle’s essay is considered a personal. Reading it was like he was reading it to me, telling his own personal beliefs and facts he knows with me.
In Doyle’s writing I notice a heart to heart comparison of what he is analyzing his life after. Living to fast can make you die young. But living slowly can make you heart fail. Today teenagers don’t make foundation’s to help communities or ourselves, teenagers simply seek revenue. What stood out most to me in the analysis of his essay is the whale. In general message of the essay you think about the animal’s small or big heart. The essay analyzed the comparisons and differences of a whale and woodpecker’s heart. The significance of life as a human is the common similarities; humans die from a enlarged heart all the time and from heart problems. The woodpecker in the story is similar to humans, when they have a heart attack. Human’s heartbeats too fast causing it start to overdue its normal beating speed. The whale has an enormous heart, the beating is normal not the same pace as a humans. Yet humans can still die from a enlarged heart. I would consider this poem private and public. Until you have these heart problems or difficulties you will never know how it feels. If you have a adrenaline rush or become excited your heart may experience some of these multiple experiences. I think this could also be private I think there is a underlying message in this essay. That the writer does not fully tell us, another experience that would make him create such a moving essay.
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