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
In his old life, Bauby writes, he “loved to travel.” He has stored enough “pictures, smells, and sensations” in his mind over the years to enable himself to “leave Berck far behind” using only his imagination and memories. Every day this week has been rainy and dull—and so every morning, Bauby has been flying in his mind to Hong Kong, where he knows a conference for the international editions of Elle is taking place. He still feels that the magazine is “his,” and misses the work he did there. Bauby has never actually visited Hong Kong, and is forced to imagine the city from scratch, so to speak.
Throughout the book, readers have seen Bauby look back on memories wistfully, with an air of sadness, and invent fantastical situations for himself that are tinged with that same sense of loss. Here, though, as Bauby explores the powers of his imagination, he finds himself relishing his own fantasies and enjoying the act of constructing an alternate present for himself bit by bit.
Themes
Bauby pictures his colleagues, “tireless […] ambassadors of French style,” standing around in hotels and discussing the “typical Elle woman.” He imagines them walking through the “neon-bright streets” of Hong Kong, taking in the sights, drinking in hotel bars, and soaking up the “international glamour.”
Bauby clearly luxuriates in these escapist fantasies, which comingle past, present, and future as he envisions an end to his confinement and a return to his previous life.
Themes
