The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

In the prologue, we are introduced to the narrator, Jean-Dominique Bauby, who writes from a first-person point of view. He opens by describing his awakening at the break of day. He relays, “My heels hurt, my head weighs a ton, and something like a giant invisible diving bell holds my whole body prisoner” (3). He then surveys his room as it emerges from the waning darkness. He reveals that he has been confined to his bed for the past six months, and that his life as he knew it was “snuffed out” on Friday, December 8th of the previous year.

Bauby explains that a massive stroke, which he terms a“cerebrovascular accident”, has grievously injured his brain stem (4). Somewhat sardonically, he muses that, in the past, such a massive stroke simply resulted in death—but given the advances in medical technology that characterize the age in which he lives, he has survived. He has survived with “locked-in syndrome”. The syndrome leaves him completely paralyzed save for his ability to blink his left eyelid. He is unable to speak or move, but his mind is completely intact. Essentially, he is a prisoner in his own body.

Bauby reveals that he was in a deep coma for twenty days, and that he endured several subsequent weeks of groggy semi-consciousness before fully awakening at the end of January. He now lies in Room 119 of the Naval Hospital at Berck-sur-Mer, from which he “writes.”

He hears seven chapel bells and feels pain in his hands, although he cannot ascertain whether it is a burning pain or an icy sensation. He stretches, although his limbs only move a fraction of an inch. He then remarks that his diving bell becomes less restrictive as his “mind takes flight like a butterfly” (5). He muses that, within his own imagination, there are myriad things to do: from wandering in space to visiting King Midas’s court, to sliding down beside the woman he loves and stroking her sleeping face, to discovering Atlantis. He then reveals that a worker from his publisher will soon arrive dictation of what he playfully terms his “travel notes” and begins to painstakingly craft his sentences in his head.

At 7:30, a duty nurse enacts a routine he knows well: she draws the curtain, checks the tracheotomy and drip feed, and turns the TV on so that Bauby can watch the news. He sees that, presently, a cartoon “celebrates the adventures of the fastest frog in the West” and then muses, “And what if I asked to be changed into a frog? What then?” (6).