Brian Doyle's Essay 'Joyas Voladoras'

Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca is best known as the first Spaniard to explore what we now consider to be southwestern United States. His nine-year odyssey is chronicled within the book The Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition. His account is considered especially interesting because it is one of the very first documents that illustrates interactions between American natives and explorers. However, when examining the exploration of the modern United States, there are many arguments that have to do with the entitlement to the land and the motivations behind settling in the first place. Most explorers were obviously in favor of their own conquests and Cabeza de Vaca is of course no exception. In Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition, Cabeza de

There is no doubt that humans have always been intrigued with the majestic beauty of the large giants found in all of the world’s oceans. Whales and people have had a long history together, marked by many turns of events.

Inside our body there is a powerful muscular pump, which is known as the one of the main organs in the human body. This hollow, cone shaped, pump lies slightly left within the center of the chest called our heart. The heart is made up of different structures and actions in order for it to work, combined with a network of blood vessels form what we know as the cardiovascular system.

Within the works of “Fiesta, 1980” it takes us in the lives of a Latin American family. We are described a traditional style Latino family were there is a dominate father figure, a submissive mother, and obedient children more or less. There are two boys the eldest Rafa and the youngest Yunior and their younger sister Madai. During the transgression of the story it is conveyed through the eyes of Yunior. And like any typical family it has its own story to tell.

The cardiovascular system, however, would not be able to effectively complete these functions without help from what is sometimes referred to as the body’s hardest-working organ- the heart. Approximately the size of a fist, the heart is contains four chambers (the uppermost are called the atria and the lowermost are called the ventricles) and four valves. Additionally, the heart is surrounded by the pericardium, a structure that serves to protect the heart, keep the heart stabilized in the chest, and

In the book “Joyas Voladoras” by published editor Brain Doyle, Doyle begins talking about humming birds. The heart of a humming bird, and its physical aspects. Doyle then elaborates on the title that it translates to flying jewels, which the first explorers named them. Doyle is talking about life, the center of all living things life, the heart and the different aspects of the heart. The memory that can be stored there, the heartbeats, the size and even how a heart can be broken. Doyle presents his ideas differently but causes the reader to connect emotionally, factually, and fairly personally.

Social science teaches that a person’s self identity is a reflection of that which other people put on the individual, in other words a person’s behavior steams more from what they see of themselves from someone else’s perspective and less from how they see themselves. In the case of the Mexicans, this concept holds true. From that, which has been studied thus far this semester, Mexicans/ Mexican Americans are good examples of this concept. Their sorted past has resulted in a new kind of Mexican American and perhaps a new kind of Mexican. Certainly the Mexicans American’s experience in this country has brought about some changes from the first generation of Mexicans who were born in this country to those who

As children grow up in a dysfunctional family, they experience trauma and pain from their parent’s actions, words, and attitudes. With this trauma experienced, they grew up changed; different from other children. The parent’s behavior affects them and whether they like it or not, sometimes it can influence them, and they can react against it or can repeat it. In Junot Díaz’s “Fiesta, 1980”, is presented this theme of the dysfunctional family. The author presents a story of an adolescent Latin boy called Junior, who narrates the chronicles of his dysfunctional family, a family of immigrants from the Dominican Republic driving to a party in the Bronx, New York City. “Papi had been with

2) a) Here, Emerson means that all hearts vibrate to the same instinct of what is right and what is wrong. He connects everyone worldwide by stating that all their hearts are similar in many ways. Although people are different, they all share one thing: instinct. Everyone is born with a sense of direction.

“Aguantando” means holding on. In the very first paragraph we see how important it is for the narrator, Yunior, to hold on to his father’s memory. Yunior lives with his mother (Mami), grandfather (Abuelo) and brother (Rafa). They live in a house where anything of value, including furniture, food, clothing and even Mami’s Bible is stained from a leaky roof. As a Hispanic male, believe me when I tell you there is nothing more sacred than Mami’s Bible in that home. Yet it is clear how important Papi’s pictures are because they’re always in a plastic sandwich bag to keep them dry. It’s also clear that Papi leaving was the

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

The heart is a very strong muscle that has one major job. The heart’s job is to pump blood throughout the entire body. The heart is made up of 4 chambers, and 4 valves. There is the right and left atrium, and a right and left ventricle. The atriums are the superior chambers, and the ventricles are inferior chambers. The left ventricle is the most important, because that is where the blood travels through to go to the aorta, and eventually the rest of the body (Taylor 2015).

Spain during the 16th century has been described as a time of oppression, a time of exploitation of the subordinate class. For example, in the text of The Life of Lazarillo De Tormes a gluttonist priest offers Lazarillo scraps of an Eucharist bread, that was nibbled by mice. The priest tells Lazaro to take the bread, stating “There, eat that. The mouse is a clean animal.” This shows the how the higher class sees the lower class, it shows how they believe in offerings coming from them should be taken as a gift, even if a literal rodent has tampered with it. Most who could live during this this time usually were those who held high levels of intelligence and were also devious. Due to this, Lazarillo, being a man who holds the fore told

Imagine walking into a deserted town, exhausted from the scorching rays of the sun. It becomes more and more difficult to muster up the last ounce of energy to take another step, and eventually you drop to the ground. In this example setting is enhanced in a way that a tone of hopelessness for the character is developed. First, the setting is developed in a manner that places a hardship on the character. Furthermore, the town is devoid of life ensuring that any help to the character is out of the question and the sun itself is creating the hardship for the character. Similarly, Juan Rulfo uses the setting of his novel, Pedro Páramo, in order to influence the tone, which ultimately leads to his purpose of writing the novel. Comala, the

Sandro Botticelli painted La Primavera between 1477 and 1482 for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, a member of the powerful Florentine family. While many Renaissance works depicted scenes of Christianity, this work as well as the others in its group – The Birth of Venus, for example - are focused around tales from classical mythology. Designed to hang in a private room, the painting did not need to be made accessible to large audiences like other works of the time, such as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo. An educated family with strong Humanistic ties, the Medici would have had the necessary knowledge to interpret the painting’s subject, while the common people would not have. Now located in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence,