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.
Chapter 24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 24 Summary: “The Message”
Bauby muses that, although his part of the hospital resembles an expensive private school, the cafeteria crowd couldn’t be further from private school students: “the girls have hard eyes, the boys tattoos and sometimes rings on their fingers. There they sit, chain-smoking and talking about fistfights and motorbikes” (107). He conjectures that Berck is just one stop in their journey from abused childhoods to jobless futures, and that he sees “neither pity nor compassion in their eyes” when he is wheeled past them and they fall silent (107). He observes that a small typewriter with a sheet of pink paper stuck in the roller stands on a table cluttered with empty cups. He muses, “Although at the moment the page is utterly blank, I am convinced that someday there will be a message for me there. I am waiting” (108).
Chapter 24 Analysis
In this chapter, Bauby’s selection of detail mirrors the central contrasting images of the diving bell and the butterfly, although those two images are themselves not present in this chapter. He draws a distinct contrast between the gritty, joyless, and hopeless crowd of patients in the cafeteria and the brightly ethereal image of the typewriter and the as-yet unmet promise of a magic message appearing on its pink sheet of paper.
