Living Immobile

Jean-Dominique Bauby is an active, well-traveled man forty-three-year-old man whose life is dramatically changed when a massive stroke leaves him paralyzed from the waist down. Jean's vibrant life is now reduced to being strapped to a hospital bed or harnessed to a wheelchair. The reader would not be surprised if Jean talked about how lonely he feels or the depression that settles over his life as he stares through one eye at the same four walls day in and day out. However, Jean does not reveal whether he suffers from these emotions; instead, he writes in an upbeat tone that leads the reader to forget that Jean is locked in.

As Jean tells his story, his tone and affect do not reflect a man living with locked-in syndrome. The dreary walls of Room 119 come to life in Jean's imagination and he takes himself with the reader as...