Hardly anyone in the world has lived with locked-in syndrome, but author Jean Dominique Bauby is able to put us in the mindset of someone who has. In his memoir called “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” Bauby suddenly experiences a life-threatening stroke that had no oncoming. Bauby was diagnosed with locked-in syndrome which restricts him to the use of one eye to communicate with the world. The whole book was written by Bauby using a single eye to explain his deepest thoughts and to explain how it feels to have locked-in syndrome. Bauby effectively portrays the duality of the mental and physical existence through the use of tone and, language portrayed in the vignettes he writes. In the vignette “The photo,” we open with Bauby taking …show more content…
We are told that every day around noon the same stretcher bearer wishes Bauby a cheerful “bon appetit” as his way of saying see you tomorrow. Bauby then refers to this as the equivalent of saying “Merry Christmas on August 15th or good night in broad daylight” (Bauby, 35). Bauby starts to illustrate the picture of what eight months of deprivation from taste did to his body, and how it started to allowed him to explore the tastes that have been stored in his mind, he says “Once, I was a master at recycling leftovers. Now I cultivate the art of simmering memories”(Bauby, 36). Bauby talks about how he is able to“get the finest ingredients: the freshest vegetables, fish straight from the water, and the most delicately marbled meat”(Bauby, 36) when referring to what he makes on the daily basis in his mind. Bauby then refers to is obsession with sausage from a young age. He credits this to his vast memory of flavors , he said that while other kids his age preferred candy he preferred Savory Meats, add even had a friend send him the recipe for authentic homemade sausage that he could retreat in his …show more content…
Bauby explains how he was able to mentally travel to different cities around the world that he has been to before in his life, but even ones that he has never seen. Bauby says that he can do this due to the amount of stored pictures, smells, and Sensations he has built up over the years of being mobile. Bauby is able to recall the sour smells at a New York bar, feel the melting heat of the sun in Nevada , and even explore the whole city of Hong Kong. He mentions that he had always had an opportunity to go to Hong Kong stripped away by an unfortunate event, like him losing his passport, getting sick the day before departure, or giving up his seat to let Jean-Paul fly instead of him. Bauby then talks about Jean-Paul and how he was taken as a prisoner of war and left in a cell with no one to talk to for many years, left to“endlessly recite the wines of the Bordeaux Classification of 1855 to keep from going mad”(Bauby, 104). Bauby references Jean-Paul’s confinement because he can relate to it now on a very personal level. Just as Jean-Paul was confined to a small room with no one to talk to or understand what he was actually going through, Bauby is the same, except he is a prisoner of his own body. His last sentence says “now I am the prisoner and he is the free man” ironically after his reflection with Jean-Paul. Bauby still refers to the