The Diving Bell And The Butterfly Analysis

Every now and then life gives us a challenge, and often that challenge can define our life and who are. The memoir wrote by Jean-Dominique Bauby describes such a challenge. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly challenges the minds of readers to imagine a world of pure terror where ones whole existence changes due to being trapped in their own body, left to live life through one’s own memories and imagination.
Bauby begins by describing how he is awakening from a stroke and is trapped in his own body due to a rare condition called “locked-in syndrome”. Imagine being trapped inside a body that can no longer move, feel or speak, but yet having complete mental capacity to do so. How horrific it would be to fully understand all that is going on,
Bauby really shows us how his mind takes flight like a “butterfly” as he takes us back in time to escape this horrible hell in which he is trapped. He describes his great glamorous life so well that we forget he is paralyzed for a moment and then he brings back to the startling truth. His imagination takes you on a journey to plays far away and then brings you back to this terrifying reality where you see, all he has is his mind. Bauby talks about how every meal is cooked to perfection. The ingredients, the possibilities are all endless. However the cold reality is he will never again taste anything, he’s left to just remember how something tastes. His paralyzed state has left him being tube fed for all eternity . Bauby really brings to light all the simple things that we often take for granted in life, like changing a channel on the television. He brings you into a world where he must choose to lay there in complete nothingness or take that chance on how long before some comes along to change the channel . Throughout the book Bauby tells of how he uses his imagination in combination with his memories to go to a better place. He talks of how he’s stored enough “pictures, smells and sensations” to leave behind this dismal existence at Berck, and travel to New York, St. Petersburg, Nevada and Hong Kong . His imagination and memories are all that has for means of escape from reality. He portrays