The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: The Sausage Summary & Analysis

Every day, after his session on the vertical board, Bauby is returned to his room and his bed. Every day, without fail, the nurse’s aide transporting him wishes him “Bon appetit!” since it is about lunchtime when he returns to his room. As Bauby has been unable to swallow anything over the last eight months other than a few drops of water and half a teaspoon of yogurt, he finds this cheerful wish ridiculous. Bauby is fed through a tube now—and “for pleasure,” he must turn to his memories of eating delectable meals before his accident.

Daily, Bauby imagines lush, decadent meals of escargot, soft-boiled eggs, fresh vegetables, tender fish, and fatty steaks. He rotates the menu in his head as the seasons pass, imagining “oysters and game [in] the autumn” and cooler meals of melon and fruit in the summertime. In the weeks after awakening from his coma, Bauby was “gluttonous,” but these days he is content to imagine meals of simple things, like a good sausage—his favorite meal all through his childhood, which his ailing grandfather’s nurse (and later, wife) often served him on visits to the old man’s apartment.