Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory, Imagination, and Freedom
Isolation vs. Communication
Resilience and Determination
Irony and Humor
Summary
Analysis
Bauby is sad to realize that his old life is fading away—it “burns within” him sometimes still, but his memories are slowly, surely turning to “ashes.” He recalls two medical trips to Paris made “since taking up residence in [his] diving bell.” On the first, looking at the city through the windows of the ambulance transporting him, he became emotional when he passed by the high-rise building which housed the offices of Elle magazine, where Bauby was once the editor in chief. On the second trip back to Paris, he felt “unmoved” by the sight of the office building—the city streets appeared to him as a “movie background,” a set from which he was the only thing missing.
Bauby looks back on his memories of returning to Paris to find that, by his second trip back, he felt almost nothing as he passed through the city. This shows that, in spite of his stagnant state, Bauby is indeed changing—the things that were once important to him are now mere facsimiles of themselves. His old life is truly gone, and the new person he’s become has overshadowed who he once was. This fact is both heartening and deeply sad.
Themes
