The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Twenty to One Summary & Analysis

As Bauby’s old friend Vincent drives from Paris to Berck to pay him a visit, Bauby recalls a memory from their time as young men working at a now-defunct daily newspaper. Bauby’s mind moves back and forth between memories of working hard seven days a week at the paper with Vincent and imaginings of the frustrating route ahead of Vincent now as he drives the small backroads towards Berck—a trip he has made many times, devoted as he is to visiting Bauby despite the poor roads and constant construction. 

One Sunday, Bauby and Vincent went to the racetrack. Though neither was a racing fan, the track correspondent gave the newsmen a tip about a “guaranteed winner,” a horse called Mithra-Grandchamp, whose odds were twenty to one. The two men ate lunch at a restaurant overlooking the track alongside “gangsters [and] pimps, parolees, and other shady characters.” The men smoked cigars, ate,  drank, and lingered so long in the restaurant that they missed the chance to put their bets in—they’d collected money from all their coworkers, assured that the horse would win and all would receive a large payout. Vincent and Bauby watched helplessly as the race they’d failed to bet on was run—and Mithra-Grandchamp, as foretold, won the race by a lead of five lengths. Vincent and Bauby imagined their coworkers, who must have been “going wild around the TV screen” back at work.

As Vincent, in the present, arrives at Berck and enters Bauby’s hospital room, Bauby notices a “transient gleam of fear” pass his old friend’s face. Nonetheless, Vincent approaches Bauby, kisses his forehead, and sits beside him. Bauby had, until today, forgotten all about the story of Mithra-Grandchamp—but now, he sees the horse as a larger metaphor for all the things he and Vincent narrowly missed out on in life. Bauby cannot help but feel that his life, in retrospect, is “a string of those small near misses.”