Hearts And Hummingbirds In Brian Doyle's 'Joyas Voladoras'

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Nicole Dioquino Limcolioc EWRT 1A 19 June 2015 Significance of Hearts and Hummingbirds As William J. Clinton once said, “If you live long enough, you'll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you'll be a better person”. Although there may be bumps in the road when it comes to people’s love lives and life in general, there is always a guarantee that it gets better. In the short story, Joyas Voladoras by Brian Doyle, the author narrates a unique approach on his metaphors on animals and how they represent a deeper message on the average way of life on how do people survive and love. This is significant because many readers tend to misinterpret the masked information that the writer is trying to give. As human beings, everyone is…show more content…
In one of the scenes, Doyle was describing how the hummingbird’s "...price of their ambition is a life closer to death; they suffer heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures more than any other living creature...You burn out. You fry the machine" (Doyle 273). This is explaining how the bird may fly at constant speed, but it is more likely for them to suffer the consequences such as “heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures” compared to other living creatures that will live much longer. This quote also further explains that everyone can live their lives swift and moving all over the place, but will not be able to live as memorable as they could have had. The significance out of this passage is that if a person constantly striving or hungry for “ambition”, they are far more prone to burn out in the end. In other terms, the life expectancy of the hummingbird or a really earnest individual is likely to run out of steam. The animal is compared to other living mammals (like the turtle or whale that goes at a slow pace) and their life spans have a greater chance of living. The hidden message out of this is not to take life too seriously and people should go at their own pace because they are in favor of achieving everything they desire to do. Overall, this is important because the hummingbird symbolizes people who tend to overlook the details and rush through things in order to get the agenda done. But the results usually end up going the opposing side of things because they are less present in the moment rather than living gradually -- enjoying what comes out of

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