Brian Doyle's Joyas Voladoras first appeared in The American Scholar in 2004 and was later selected for Best American Essays in 2005. Doyle’s intended audience is the general population, though his writing style attracts both the logical reader and the hopeless romantics who seek metaphors pointing to love in any way. The beginning of the essay provides insight to general information about the hummingbird, which holds the smallest, capable, and fragile heart in the world. He then explains the significance of the blue whale’s heart with comparisons, indicating that the blue whale holds a heart the size of a room. He ends his essay by expressing that a human’s heart is always closed due to the fear of it breaking, remaining constantly fragile. In order to prove his point further, he also states that even if a heart defends itself with barriers, those barriers will always break due to the smallest of emotional triggers. Therefore, Doyle succeeds at evoking intense emotions from his audience due to a brilliant rhetorical strategy involving a pathetic appeal approach, emphasizing on the reality of the human heart and the pain of love. His skillful use of metaphors, facts, contrast, and poetic stylized writing methods assist him in successfully inspiring his audience to realize that the heart is more than just an organ.
Joyas Voladoras was written with a few target groups in mind: the logical individuals who are interested in the explanation of how, why, and to what end the heart functions, and the hopeless romantics who look for any semblance of love in a text. To successfully capture his target audience’s attention, as well as the attention of other readers outside of his target audience, Doyle exhibits an understanding of using met...
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...ow much information he discloses to his audience without overburdening them, by including an underlying message that is hidden within the metaphors and facts; comparing the size of the different hearts with familiar objects and therefore making them perceivable; and using his distinct poetic style and tone to evoke emotion from his audience. By emphasizing the factual and emotional evocative nature of his rhetoric strategy, and presenting it in a personal and eloquent manner, he seems to be able to successfully connect with his audience. Ultimately, the overall tone of the essay entices his readers to think and feel deeply along with the text, adding to its many noteworthy qualities.
Works Cited
Doyle, Brian. “Joyas Voladoras”. The Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. Bartholomae, Petrosky. 9th ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 273-275. Print.
What is Doyle’s message in Joyas Voladoras? Well, there could be many interpretations, but I specifically think that he’s trying to tell us about the heart. It does talk about many different subjects, like hummingbirds and blue whales, but it always comes back to ONE subject: the heart, the physical one and the emotional one.
Wideman, John Edgar. “Our Time.” Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. 9th ed. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky, Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 657-694. Print.
The Author, Hollie Pritchard, conveys the idea that the “Tell-Tail Heart” is a story of sadomasochism which entails egocentrism, pleasure through pain, and an abundance of sexually charged language. Pointing out the narrator’s sadomasochistic tendencies, the author provides valid points that serve as evidence to the narrator’s insanity. Highlighting how sadists suffer from a fixed idea, e.g. the old man’s eye, and the confession of the crime being the narrator’s way of self-inflicting the punishment onto himself, push the author to explore the different ways the “Tell-Tale Heart” is a story far more complicated than we can imagine.
The power to change is man’s greatest struggles, since a strong influence that lead them to where they are now. It is also the price and journey that both Montresor in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell Tale Heart” and the narrator of the “The Cask of Amontillado”, another of poe’s story. In both story the narrators, both indicate that they want to get rid of an addiction they had that is driving them to madness, and in order to do so they, must do it at any cost. Both narrator clearly plan on their instincts and carefully plans out methods in which leads them to their satisfaction. These stories contain many similarities and differences in the use of tone, irony and symbolism, of the protagonist. Through these characters and their actions,
Think about the hummingbirds, also known as Flying Jewels. The book “Joyas Voladoras”, by Brian Doyle, talks about hummingbirds, Blue whale's, heart chambers and emotions, that relate back to us. The author says that hummingbirds are beautiful and fragile, while Blue whales are the biggest animales. The author also says that some creatures have 1, 2, 3, 4, or even elivane chambered hearts, but Unicellular bacteria have no hearts. In the last paragraph he talks about emotions and are hearts. The author has a message that he is trying to give through his essay. The message is that we look at the small things in life, but we have less knowledge about the big ones.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most recognized prose poets, short story authors, and literary composers of all time. His works contain trending themes such as love, time, death and the concept of “oneness.” Poe often expressed these themes according to events that he had experienced, and some of his themes intertwined with others. Take for instance, his love for beauty and perfection played a major role in his concept of oneness, or state of absolute fulfillment. However in his short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, Poe effectively explores the power of guilt, and leads his readers through a cynical plot to murder while enduring the struggle to silence a beating conscience by treading the lines of genius versus insanity, moral reasoning versus indifferent resolution, and meticulousness versus obsession.
Through vivid yet subtle symbols, the author weaves a complex web with which to showcase the narrator's oppressive upbringing. Two literary
Rodriguez, Richard. "The Achievement of Desire." Petrosky, Anthony and David Bartholomae. Ways of Reading An Anthology for Writers. Boston ; New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010. 516-532.
Junot Diaz displays in his short story “Fiesta” how an abusive father can cause a family
Throughout the poem, the author uses various types of figurative language to immerse the reader in the thoughts and feeling of the speaker. The personification of fear in the form of Mr. Fear provides one such example.
Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” Robert DiYanni, ed. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 6th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2007.
“The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe.” University of Virginia, n.d. Web. 27 March, 2014.
Effectively using these elements in a piece of literature enhances the reader’s curiosity. One prime example of such usage of these elements is seen in Kate Chopin's writing. Her use of foreshadowing and use of emotional conflicts put into few words in the short piece "The Storm" adds an element that is alluring, holding the reader's interest. In this short piece of literature, a father and son, Bobinot and Bibi, are forced to remain in a store where they were shopping before the storm, waiting for the storm to pass over them. In the meantime, the wife and mother, Calixta, whom is still at home, receives an unexpected visit from a former lover named Alicee. The two have an affair and the story starts to come together. The story shows us how we tend to want what we beli...
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To begin, the sound of this poem can be proven to strongly contribute an effect to the message of this piece. This poem contains a traditional meter. All of the lines in the poem except for lines nine and 15 are in iambic tetrameter. In this metric pattern, a line has four pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables, for a total of eight syllables. This is relevant in order for the force of the poem to operate dynamically. The poem is speaking in a tenor of veiled confessions. For so long, the narrator is finally speaking up, in honesty, and not holding back. Yet, though what has been hidden is ultimately coming out, there is still this mask, a façade that is being worn. In sequence, the last words in each of the lines, again, except for lines nine and 15, are all in rhythm, “lies, eyes, guile, smile, subtleties, over-wise, sighs, cries, arise, vile...