Though Jean-Dominique Bauby suggests that freedom can be found in the power of the mind and the imagination even when all hope seems lost, he also uses The Diving Bell and the Butterfly to comment on the dual nature of “locked-in” syndrome. His mind is his only refuge, and it is frequently a pleasant one—but at the end of the day, Bauby is indeed locked into his own body, and the isolation that fact begets is threaded through the entire narrative. Bauby’s ability to communicate with the outside world is limited to the blinking of his left eyelid, and he uses that miniscule amount of control to unlock himself from his prison, tell his story, and communicate with his caretakers and loved ones. As Bauby vacillates between the pain of isolation and the gratitude he feels at being able to communicate in at least one small way, he sheds light on the larger battle all humans face against the desire to give up when reaching out feels too tough—and ultimately argues that the ability to share our thoughts, our feelings, and our stories is worth any struggle.
Bauby’s “locked-in syndrome” threatens to cut him off from the world, but the discovery that he can still blink his left eyelid after a life-threatening stroke, which renders him almost entirely paralyzed, means that Bauby’s isolation is not as deep as it could be. The only way he can communicate with the outside world is by blinking, but rather than be daunted by the effort, Bauby chooses not to shut down and further isolate himself, but instead tell his story to his friends, family, and indeed the world. Bauby sees those who help him communicate with others—his speech therapist Sandrine and his interlocutor Claude—as “guardian angel[s.]” Bauby, a journalist and newsman his entire career, knows that words are everything, and that the only way to ease his isolation is to seek out communication no matter how difficult it is to do so.
With the help of Sandrine and Claude, Bauby is able to tell his story—and escape the weight of his metaphorical diving bell in doing so. The book’s most profound example of the importance of communication in order to stave off isolation occurs when Bauby hears from some visiting friends that gossip at his old magazine, Elle, is spreading—and people on the streets of Paris are calling Bauby a “vegetable.” Soon thereafter, he begins sending out a monthly bulletin to his former coworkers to update them on his progress. Sure, there’s a little bit of Bauby’s ironic and confrontational humor in the gesture—but there’s also something deeper. Bauby knows that he will never be seen as the man he once was, but he refuses to retreat into shame and isolation. He wants to show his coworkers that he is not a “vegetable”—the core of who he is has not changed, and his belief in the power of communication has not wavered. The newsletter has an incredible effect. His old coworkers begin sending letters that pour into the hospital in Berck-sur-Mer: letters that range from simple, quotidian updates about their own lives to long, profound missives about the meaning of life, the nature of friendship, and the value of the human spirit. Bauby regards these letters as “treasure[s,]” and indeed admits that they are, on many days, the only thing that staves off the “vultures” of doubt that threaten to push him further into isolation.
Bauby admits throughout the memoir that he struggles with the desire to retreat into himself, to surrender to the “vultures” that claw at his mind, and to abandon the immense effort it takes just to complete a single sentence. However, he ultimately realizes that the only way to get out of his “diving bell” is to reach out to those around him—to uphold his long-held belief in the value of communication and community, the written word, and the search for ways to connect across the vast chasms that separate even healthy, normal people from one another each and every day.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Isolation vs. Communication ThemeTracker
Isolation vs. Communication Quotes in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Through the frayed curtain at my window, a wan glow announces the break of day. My heels hurt, my head weighs a ton, and something like a giant invisible diving bell holds my whole body prisoner. My room emerges slowly from the gloom. I linger over every item: photos of loved ones, my children’s drawings, posters, the little tin cyclist sent by a friend the day before the Paris-Roubaix bike race, and the IV pole hanging over the bed where I have been confined these past six months, like a hermit crab dug into his rock.
My diving bell becomes less oppressive, and my mind takes flight like a butterfly. There is so much to do. You can wander off in space or in time, set out for Tierra del Fuego or for King Midas’s court.
You can visit the woman you love, slide down beside her and stroke her still-sleeping face. You can build castles in Spain, steal the Golden Fleece, discover Atlantis, realize your childhood dreams and adult ambitions.
One day, for example, I can find it amusing, in my forty-fifth year, to be cleaned up and turned over, to have my bottom wiped and swaddled like a newborn’s. I even derive a guilty pleasure from this total lapse into infancy. But the next day, the same procedure seems to me unbearably sad, and a tear rolls down through the lather a nurse’s aide spreads over my cheeks. And my weekly bath plunges me simultaneously into distress and happiness. The delectable moment when I sink into the tub is quickly followed by nostalgia for the protracted immersions that were the joy of my previous life.
A strange euphoria came over me. Not only was I exiled, paralyzed, mute, half deaf, deprived of all pleasures, and reduced to the existence of a jellyfish, but I was also horrible to behold. There comes a time when the heaping up of calamities brings on uncontrollable nervous laughter—when, after a final blow from fate, we decide to treat it all as a joke. My jovial cackling at first disconcerted [the Empress] Eugénie, until she herself was infected by mirth. We laughed until we cried.
A niche must be found for us, broken-winged birds, voiceless parrots, ravens of doom, who have made our nest in a dead-end corridor of the neurology department. Of course, we spoil the view. I am all too conscious of the slight uneasiness we cause as, rigid and mute, we make our way through a group of more fortunate patients.
Quite apart from the practical drawbacks, [my] inability to communicate is somewhat wearing. Which explains the gratification I feel twice daily when Sandrine knocks, pokes her small chipmunk face through the door, and at once sends all gloomy thoughts packing. The invisible and eternally imprisoning diving bell seems less oppressive.
“How do you feel, Pop?” asks Théophile.
His pop’s throat is tight, his hands are sunburned, and his bottom hurts from sitting on it too long, but he has had a wonderful day. And what about you kids, what will you carry back from this field trip into my endless solitude?
At the Café de Flore, one of those camps of Parisian snobbery that send up rumors like flights of carrier pigeons, some close friends of mine overheard a conversation at the next table.
“Did you know that Bauby is now a total vegetable?” said one [gossiper.]
“Yes, I heard, a complete vegetable,” came the reply. […] The tone of voice left no doubt that henceforth I belonged on a vegetable stall and not to the human race. […] I would have to rely on myself if I wanted to prove that my IQ was still higher than a turnip’s.
Thus was born a collective correspondence that keeps me in touch with those I love. And my hubris has had gratifying results. Apart from the irrevocable few who maintain a stubborn silence, everybody now understands that he can join me in my diving bell, even if sometimes the diving bell takes me into unexplored territory. I receive remarkable letters. […] I carefully read each [one] myself. […] I hoard all these letters like treasure.
This afternoon, Claude (the young woman to whom I am dictating this book) and Brice are with me. I have known Claude for two weeks, Brice for twenty-five years. It is strange to hear my old partner in crime telling Claude about me. My quick temper, my love of books, my immoderate taste for good food, my red convertible—nothing is left out. Like a storyteller exhuming the legends of a lost civilization.
Far from such din, when blessed silence returns, I can listen to the butterflies that flutter inside my head. To hear them, one must be calm and pay close attention, for their wingbeats are barely audible. Loud breathing is enough to drown them out. This is astonishing: my hearing does not improve, yet I hear them better and better. I must have butterfly hearing.
I should not feel morally superior to Olivier, for today I envy him his mastery of the storyteller’s art. I am not sure I will ever acquire such a gift, although I, too, am beginning to forge glorious substitute destinies for myself.
Like millions of Parisians, our eyes empty and our complexions dull, Florence and I embarked like zombies on a new day. […] I mechanically carried out all those simple acts that today seem miraculous to me: shaving, dressing, downing a hot chocolate.
I have indeed begun a new life, and that life is here, in this bed, that wheelchair, and those corridors. Nowhere else.
September means the end of vacations, it means back to school and to work… […] But here at Berck I hear only the faintest echoes of the outside world’s collective return to work and responsibility…
[Claude’s] purse is half open, and I see a hotel room key, a metro ticket, and a hundred-franc note folded in four, like objects brought back by a space probe sent to earth to study how earthlings live, travel, and trade with one another. The sight leaves me pensive and confused. Does the cosmos contain keys for opening up my diving bell? A subway line with no terminus? A currency strong enough to buy my freedom back? We must keep looking. I’ll be off now.
