The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Locked-in syndrome is an apt name for the condition in which Bauby lives following his stroke. His consciousness and mental faculties, completely intact and lacking none of the agility and vitality that characterized him prior to the stroke, became locked inside of a paralyzed body. Despite this physical condition, Bauby refuses to let his spirit die. The persistence of his spirit and his will to find and enjoy the beauty and pleasures in life, old and new, is the thread that binds each distinct vignette of his memoir together. Even the vignettes that portray the darkness that would inevitably and naturally beset him are rendered in such bright, intelligent, and precise detail that the reader can easily understand them as an affirmation of life, an assertion of emotional intelligence, and a declaration of the will to live—despite mighty difficulties. 

Bauby’s sense of wonder is a constant throughout his memoir. On one level, the reader can see his vivid recollections of crystalline memories of his former life, conjured in precise detail from his hospital bed, as a searing duality. While he undertakes one life in a paralyzed body, his previous adventure-filled life persists.