The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Through a Glass, Darkly Summary & Analysis

Bauby’s ex-lover Sylvie pushes him in his wheelchair down one of the hospital’s corridors while their two children, Théophile and Céleste, walk alongside the chair. Théophile tenderly dabs drool from his father’s chin with a Kleenex, and when the wheelchair slows down at the end of the hall, Céleste covers Bauby’s forehead in kisses. Today is Father’s Day—a holiday Bauby and his family never celebrated before his stroke. As happy as he is to have his children with him on this symbolic day, he worries that his appearance and stillness upset them.

Sylvie wheels Bauby out to a little sand dune outside of the hospital walls, and as Théophile and Céleste talk to him, Bauby laments that he cannot reply wittily and jokingly to their fast-paced remarks. The three of them play a game of hangman, but Bauby is distracted—he is too depressed by how painful it is to interact with his children in his current “monstrous, iniquitous, revolting, horrible” condition. He begins to cry quietly while Théophile wins the game. Bauby turns away from the paper and watches as the athletic Céleste cartwheels up and down the shore, and then begins singing and dancing for her family and all the others gathered on the dunes. 

Céleste’s little show sends Bauby down memory lane, and he recalls listening to the records she’s singing songs from and summons their album covers to his mind’s eye. When Céleste finishes, she and Théophile play on the beach for a little while and Sylvie sits silently with Bauby, squeezing his hand and weeping.

Soon it is late, and it is time for Bauby’s family to leave. They all return him to his room and say goodbye—as they head out the door, Bauby laments that, although he himself has had a “wonderful” day, his children have had little more than a “field trip into [his own] endless solitude.”