58 pages • 1 hour read
Jean-Dominique BaubyThe Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1997A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “Bathtime”
This chapter recounts Bauby’s experience of being bathed. It begins at 8:30 in the morning, when a physical therapist named Brigitte arrives. She exercises his arms and legs. He reveals that he has lost 66 pounds in twenty weeks, and then muses with playful sarcasm that when he began a diet a week before his stroke, he did not dream of such a dramatic result.
Bauby recounts that he can now move his head 90 degrees, which he does in order to include the slate roof of the building next door and his son Théophile’s drawing of Mickey Mouse in his line of vision. His time with Brigitte ends with a facial massage. He reveals that there is a numb zone in his face, as well as areas in which he still has feeling and movement. The line that demarcates one zone from the other runs across his mouth, rendering him only capable of a half-smile. He muses that this physical condition faithfully mirrors his internal state, and that the commonplace event of bathing has become one that invokes subtle and intricate emotions.
On one day, he might find it amusing to be 45 years old and have his bottom wiped and diapered like a newborn. On another day, he might shed a tear at the unbearable sadness of the very same action being performed on him. His weekly bath fills him with both pleasure and sadness. Still, being able to feel pleasure while being soaked in the tub brings back vivid memories of being able to enjoy a leisurely bath with a tea or a Scotch and a good book or a pile of newspapers. He muses, though, that he scarcely has enough time to wallow in his sadness, as he quickly finds himself being wheeled back to his bed on an extremely uncomfortable gurney—because he must be dressed by 10:30 and ready to go to the rehabilitation center. He closes the chapter by recounting that he has refused the hideous jogging suit offered to him by the hospital, opting instead to be attired as he was when he was a student. He muses that, like the bath, the clothing could easily bring back painful memories of his previous life. He instead chooses to see them as proof that he still wants to be himself. “If I must drool, I may as well drool on cashmere,” he remarks (17).
Chapter 4 Summary:“The Alphabet”
In this chapter, Bauby explains how he communicates with people. He uses an alternate alphabet, printed in a notebook, which is ordered according to the frequency that each letter is used in the French language. Visitors read off letters, and Bauby blinks at every desired letter in order to spell out words and sentences. He calls this method of transcribing his thoughts a code. The notebook is also used to transcribe his thoughts and conversations, and he likens it to a Delphic oracle’s record. He provides a playful image of himself, alone in his room at night, imagining the letters of his alphabet the letters as the members of a chorus line which dances hand in hand across the expanse of his walls.
Bauby says that crossword fans and Scrabble players have a head start with using his code, and that girls do better with it than boys. He also states that some people, through practice and frequency of use, know the alternate alphabet by heart and do not need to read it from the notebook. He muses about what conclusions anthropologists would draw if, in the year 3000, they were to flip through his notebooks—which contain haphazardly scribbled remarks interspersed with gibberish.
He then contrasts the different categories his visitors fall into. For example, nervous visitors become flustered and self-deprecating, which places less burden on him, since they are eager to fill in the blanks of both sides of the conversation. Shy people place a heavier conversational burden on him to drive the conversation. Meticulous people are very precise with the code and never presume to predict or finish his words. He ends the chapter by playfully recounting a time in which a more impulsive person jumped to conclusions about him remarking about the moon (lune) when he was really asking for his glasses (lunettes).
Chapter 3-4 Analysis
These two chapters provide vivid glimpses into Bauby’s new life in the hospital. While Chapter 3 does address the indignity that he feels at being treated like a newborn baby due to his paralysis, he does not fail to inject his musings with an unflagging sense of both humor and great emotional nuance. His rejection of the hospital jogging suit, which he deems hideous, and his subsequent insistence upon being able to wear his own clothes both signal the strength and resilience of his spirit. Similarly, his depiction of the laborious work that he and his interlocutors must undertake in order to communicate is interlaced with his delicate and highly-detailed observations of his visitors, which he communicates through his classification of the various foibles that they exhibit within their usage of the alphabet. Here, too, his powers of observation and his facility with words and nuanced detail assert the enduring agility and strength of his mind and spirit.
