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
The last time Jean-Dominique Bauby saw his father was the week of his stroke. He was caring for his father, who had fallen ill, and made the man tea and shaved his face. The act of shaving his father’s beard has become “engraved” in Bauby’s memory, and he can perfectly recall his father’s aging face, “emaciated features,” and thick “snow white” hair. Bauby has not seen his father since he left the man’s apartment after shaving him—they are both trapped, infirmed, and “locked-in” in their own ways.
In this passage, Bauby reflects on the painful parallels between his situation and his father’s, and laments that they are both, in a way, paralyzed. He loses himself in memories of happier times—realizing that even moments that seemed tinged by sickness or strife were precious and sacred.
Themes
Bauby’s father calls him “every now and then,” and has sent him letters in the mail. One letter contained a photograph of Bauby as a young boy at a miniature golf course—as Bauby looked at the photograph, he realized it was taken in 1963 in Berck-sur-Mer, the same town where Bauby is now a patient.
Strange ironies and coincidences seem to be around every corner lately, and Bauby marvels at their frequency and profundity.
Themes
