The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

“Through the frayed curtain at my window, a wan glow announces the break of day. My heels hurt, my head weighs a ton, and something like a giant invisible diving bell holds my whole body prisoner. My room emerges slowly from the gloom. I linger over every item: photos of loved ones, my children’s drawings, posters, the little tin cyclist sent by a friend the day before the Paris—Roubaix bike race, and the IV pole hanging over the bed where I have been confined these past six months, like a hermit crab dug into his rock. ” 

Here, Bauby inaugurates his recurring motif of the diving bell. We see it here depicted as a clear metaphor for locked-in syndrome: it is an oppressively powerful, invisible force-field that restricts and encages Bauby, an immobilizing, impenetrable fence that inexorably separates him from his loved ones. 

“Up until [my stroke on December 8], I had never even heard of the brain stem. I’ve since learned that it is an essential component of our internal computer, the inseparable link between the brain and the spinal cord. I was brutally introduced to this vital piece of anatomy when a cerebrovascular accident took my brain stem out of action. In the past, it was known as a ‘massive stroke’, and you simply died. But improved resuscitation techniques have now prolonged and refined the agony. You survive, but you survive with what is so aptly known as ‘locked-in syndrome.’ Paralyzed from head to toe, the patient, hismind intact, is imprisoned inside his own body, unable to speak or move. In my case, blinking my left eyelid is my only means of communication.” 

The biting sarcasm that pervades this passage showcases Bauby’s slightly cynical and highly entertaining sense of humor, which allows him to indulge in self-pity that—by virtue of its self-deprecation and sarcastic wit—does not veer into histrionics. We see here that he uses this sarcasm as a way to ingratiate himself to his reader, to render his difficulties with a measure of wit and humor that never begs for pity or dwells in victimhood. 

“Of course, the party chiefly concerned is the last to hear the good news. I myself had twenty days of deep coma and several weeks of grogginess and somnolence before I truly appreciated the extent of the damage. I did not fully awake until the end of January. When I finally surfaced, I was in Room 119 of the Naval Hospital at Berck-sur-Mer, on the French Channel coast—the same Room 119, infused now with the first light of day, from which I write.” 

Here, again, we see Bauby’s wicked sense of humor bubbling to the surface, as he likens a full understanding of his new condition as “good news.” This quote also firmly establishes the setting of the story. It importantly occurs at the outset—in the prologue—in order to give the reader some concrete information before the narrative will quickly veer into flights of fancy and imagination.