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Bathtime
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
At night, Bauby dreams of the letters of the alphabet—but now, after the accident, they appear to him in a strange new order. So that he can “dictate” his book, Bauby’s interlocutor has arranged the alphabet “according to the frequency of its use in the French language.” E is first, followed by S, A, R, I, N, T, and so on. As the interpreter—or Bauby’s visitors who wish to talk with him—recite the alphabet, he waits until he hears the letter the word he wishes to “say” starts with, and then blinks. Then the recitation begins over again, until slowly, the words Bauby wants to speak come together.
As Bauby describes the manner in which he dictates his thoughts and feelings to others, readers get a sense of how difficult, laborious, and slow the process is. Bauby’s determination not just to use the alphabet to communicate with his caretakers or loved ones—but to take on the writing of an entire book—is a testament to his resilience and ironclad will.
Themes
The system is not perfect, and often Bauby and his visitors grow frustrated when he either misspells a word or when his companions misread a blink and select the wrong letter. The process is “laborious,” and often there are mix-ups, but Bauby still manages to reflect on the poetic nature of the French language and the similarities between words such as glasses (“lunettes”) and moon (“lune.”)
Even when Bauby struggles with the system that’s been put in place for him, he’s able to see the poetry and coincidences in language and communication.
Themes
