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’s corner of the hospital looks like an “expensive private school”—but the cafeteria crowd of boys and girls are tough and hardened, and often talk about “fistfights and motorbikes” as they eat and chain-smoke together at meals. Whenever Bauby is wheeled through the smoky crowds of young people, he feels utterly alone—they look at him with “neither pity nor compassion.” On a table in the cafeteria is a typewriter with a sheet of pink paper in the roller, and every time Bauby wheels by it, he checks to see if there is a message waiting there for him.
This brief, esoteric chapter seems to speak to Bauby’s sense of isolation, even in spite of his frequent visits from nurses, therapists, friends, and family. He longs for the feeling of being part of a community—and to be singled out as special, to be wanted as a friend, to be recognized as human by strangers.
Themes
