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 recalls one of his school friends as a young boy, a “mythomania[c]” named Olivier who spun wild and obviously false stories about his travels, his dramas, and his luxurious lifestyle. He lied wildly about his life, claiming to be an orphan one moment and a pampered only child the next. The stories had no coherence or consistency, and yet even in the face of the protestations of Bauby and other children, Olivier insisted all his fabrications were real.
Bauby’s memories of the fanciful, mendacious Olivier are tinged with an air of annoyance and superiority—but at the same time, he’s acknowledging that the very things he once resented or made fun of Olivier for are now at the heart of his own life.
Themes
Having looked the adult Olivier up some time before his stroke, Bauby discovered that the man worked in advertising—a fitting profession, Bauby thinks. Though he once looked down on Olivier for his nonsensical, desperate storytelling, he now “env[ies] him his mastery” of the art of telling tales. Now, in his locked-in state, Bauby himself is forced to spend lots of time in his imagination, coming up with fanciful “substitute destinies” which allow him to escape the depressing monotony of his new life.
Here, Bauby examines the irony of the fact that he once looked down on Olivier for spinning such unbelievable flights of fancy, when now he himself is forced to do just that in order to merely cope with the hand he’s been dealt. He feels more empathy for Olivier, even as he admits to feeling a kind of embarrassment for himself.
Themes
