The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

by

Jean-Dominique Bauby

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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: The Dream Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Bauby has found that the dreams of the December before his stroke are “etch[ed]” in his memory. One such dream he remembers in particularly stark detail. In it, he and a friend, are walking through a thick snow, trying to get back to France from an Italian resort. A strikers’ picket line interrupts their journey at the border. The men walk over a concrete bridge to meet with an “influential Italian businessman,” who has installed an office in a high-voltage room beneath the overpass. Inside is Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs, who performs a tracheotomy on Bauby before bringing him to a bar where a beautiful hostess plies him with alcohol. Bauby loses consciousness, and wakes to a loud noise. The hostess tells him the police are coming. As Bauby tries to run away, through the snow, though, he finds himself paralyzed and “unable to utter a word.”
This strange dream Bauby describes contains themes of isolation, entrapment, illness, and dependence on others—all things that his current existence is made up of. The dream, which occurred before his stroke, then takes on a prophetic quality—causing Bauby to wonder whether his stroke was a coincidence or an outcome his body and subconscious had, on some level, been trying to prepare him for.
Themes
Memory, Imagination, and Freedom  Theme Icon