Monday, October 8, 2007

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly- reflection

In my opinion, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was overall a good book. It had a lot of intriguing similes and imagery throughout the memoir. The struggles that Jean-Dominique Bauby went through were incredibly sad. The way he described what it was like to be a paraplegic, and stuck in your own body, made me realize how lucky I am. I am able to do simple tasks such as get myself dressed in the morning, walk around and eat, which to Jean-Dominique Bauby were big events in his daily routine. It also made me notice that when he had his stroke he really wished he could have done so much more with his life, or even just taken out a little extra time to capture all of the moments he had, while he could. It was one of his goals in life to write a book, and it wasn’t until after his stroke that he realized he could do it. He focused all of his energy on this book, and it was basically his reason for living during this rough time in his life. I admire him for this, and the fact that he kept looking on the positive side for most of the book made me like this memoir a lot.
Though I thought this book was interesting, I thought parts of it were very hard to follow. I thought this because sometimes it would jump from a dream, back to real life, to another dream, etc. It really made me think about what I was reading, and why he would tell about those dreams, etc. and how they contributed to his story. Also, Jean-Dominique Bauby mentioned many people during this fairly short book, so at times it was hard to keep the characters straight.

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