Analysis Of David Yoo's 'Heartbeat'

Is seeing believing? Is the universe a lie? These questions challenge the accuracy of our perception of reality-is reality truly what we believe it to be? Our perception of reality is not always necessarily true. People often misunderstand situations and twist the truth for their convenience. Furthermore, our eyes and our brain are also easily confused and misdirected. There are many circumstances where what we believe isn’t true and our impression of the truth is far from actuality.

To begin with, illusions are physical proof that our eyes and brains can be tricked. According to the article, “Magic and the Brain,” “neuroscientists recently borrowed a technique from magic that made volunteer subjects incorrectly link two events as cause and effect… when event A precedes event B, we often conclude, rightly or wrongly, that A causes B.” (Martinez-Conde, Line 170) Many magicians use this tactic
The main character, Dave, is a skinny kid who has a ridiculously fast metabolism, resulting in his lean frame. He believes that his classmates perceive him as an abnormal “weakling because [he’s] so thin” (Yoo, Line 3). Due to this, Dave is given the nickname, “Heartbeat, because [his] friends swear that you can actually see the pulse on [his] bare chest”(Yoo, Line 1). As a result, Dave tries many different ways to change his classmate’s perspective of him, eventually resorting to artificially make himself look bigger by wearing extra layers. However, this causes him pain and discomfort. Eventually, Dave realizes that even though it may look that he’s gained weight, the reality is that he’s still skinny. He becomes aware of the fact that even though he tries to change his classmate’s perspectives of him, reality is that he is who he is. Our perception of the real world and consequently, life is often incorrect. Reality is rarely how we believe it to be. Fact frequently differs from