Brandon’s Reviews > The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death > Status Update

Process & Product: “Claude is reading out these pages. We have patiently extracted from the void every afternoon for the last two months (131).

Does Bauby’s “butterfly hearing” mean he’s getting closer to the inside and farther from the outside of the diving bell?

The “butterfly” can animate a smile onto a statue of the empress (25). That’s comedy.

The poetry of misunderstanding: narrator wants to ask for glasses (“lunettes” in French), but as soon as the visitor sees the word “lune” spelled out, s/he asks what the narrator wanted to do with the moon (22).

More humor: “Since the demarcation line runs across my mouth, I can only half-smile, which fairly faithfully reflects my ups and downs” (16).

The narrator’s dry sense of humor regarding prayer and healing his body is what might be left to someone with locked in syndrome (13).

The body is bother: “ these uncooperative, deadweight limbs, which serve me only as a source of pain” (8).

Source of title: “[S]omething like a giant diving bell holds my whole body prisoner….My diving bell becomes less oppressive, and my mind takes flight like a butterfly” (3, 5).