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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 main hall of the Naval Hospital where Bauby is a patient is decorated in art which pays homage to Empress Eugénie, “the wife of Napoléon III [and] the hospital’s patroness.” The “mini-museum” features a letter to the editor of an old magazine describing the Empress’s “brief” visit to the hospital on May 4th, 1864. Bauby enjoys reading the letter and imagining himself among “the chattering flock of [Eugénie’s] ladies-in-waiting,” picturing the sumptuous details of the women’s beautiful clothes and soothing voices as they visited with the hospital’s patients.
During Bauby’s long hours in the hospital, whether confined to his room or pushed through the halls, he uses his imagination to help pass the time and enrich his experience of his “new life.” His imagination lets him travel to new and unexpected times and places, many of which are directly inspired by his curiosity about the things around him at Berck.
Themes
One afternoon, Bauby recalls, while sitting in his wheelchair in front of a glass-encased marble bust of Eugénie, Bauby caught sight of a man “who seemed to have emerged from a vat of formaldehyde” in the glass. Upon viewing his own “damaged,” “doomed” face, Bauby felt a “strange euphoria” at the realization that not only had everything been stripped away from him—but that he had also become “horrible to behold.” This “final blow from fate” allowed Bauby to at last see his predicament as a “joke,” and as he began to laugh, he imagined Eugénie laughing with him.
Sometimes, the cruel reality of Bauby’s situation becomes too much for him—such as in this moment, when he catches sight of his new face for the first time. Horrified but unwilling to surrender to sadness and despair, Bauby imagines a companion alongside him who laughs at the unbelievable sadness and irony of his situation.
Themes
