The central, titular, and most potent symbol throughout the book is that of a diving bell, which symbolizes the protagonist’s life inside his paralyzed body. After his stroke, which renders him paralyzed but fully intact mentally—thus suffering from “locked-in syndrome,” able to communicate with the outside world only by blinking his left eye—Jean-Dominique Bauby feels he is encased in a massive and heavy diving bell, a rigid and often human-shaped chamber or suit used throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries (and as early, perhaps, as the 4th century BCE) in order to facilitate dives into the sea. Bauby feels submerged and isolated, unable to see, hear, or feel the environment around him very well at all, and yet he is perfectly “normal" on the inside, with all of his memories intact and his imagination his only tool in his strange new world. As Bauby looks for ways “out” of his diving bell, he finds help from his speech therapist Sandrine, his interpreter Claude, and his friends and family, who visit and write letters and allow Bauby glimpses of the world as it spins on around him. The image of a diving bell is invoked frequently throughout the text, and it comes to serve as an acute and devastating symbol of Bauby’s isolation and uncertainty—though, in time, the diving bell also begins to represent a kind of solo adventure into the depths of human consciousness and the extremes of human experience, as Bauby begins to recognize himself as an explorer in uncharted waters.
The Diving Bell Quotes in 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.
My diving bell becomes less oppressive, and my mind takes flight like a butterfly. There is so much to do. You can wander off in space or in time, set out for Tierra del Fuego or for King Midas’s court.
You can visit the woman you love, slide down beside her and stroke her still-sleeping face. You can build castles in Spain, steal the Golden Fleece, discover Atlantis, realize your childhood dreams and adult ambitions.
Quite apart from the practical drawbacks, [my] inability to communicate is somewhat wearing. Which explains the gratification I feel twice daily when Sandrine knocks, pokes her small chipmunk face through the door, and at once sends all gloomy thoughts packing. The invisible and eternally imprisoning diving bell seems less oppressive.
Thus was born a collective correspondence that keeps me in touch with those I love. And my hubris has had gratifying results. Apart from the irrevocable few who maintain a stubborn silence, everybody now understands that he can join me in my diving bell, even if sometimes the diving bell takes me into unexplored territory. I receive remarkable letters. […] I carefully read each [one] myself. […] I hoard all these letters like treasure.
[Claude’s] purse is half open, and I see a hotel room key, a metro ticket, and a hundred-franc note folded in four, like objects brought back by a space probe sent to earth to study how earthlings live, travel, and trade with one another. The sight leaves me pensive and confused. Does the cosmos contain keys for opening up my diving bell? A subway line with no terminus? A currency strong enough to buy my freedom back? We must keep looking. I’ll be off now.
The Diving Bell Symbol Timeline in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
