Reflection on The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

For The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, I had mixed feelings. I couldn’t imagine someone disliking the story, which is part of how I felt. By story I meant his “life story”. The struggle that he went through was amazing, and the accomplishment of a book while he was in that state was also great. But the content of his book was what made me feel my mixed feelings. As great as the production of a book is, I felt like he was rambling and a lot of it was pointless, unnecessary, and just didn’t have any meaning. Now that is not what I meant for the whole book, but a fairly big portion. Not everything that the author says has some great or deep meaning to it. He was just writing about his time in the hospital, and we as a class don’t need to dissect every part of the book. Which is also why this book did not quite meet up to scratch for me. It is my belief that, if you read a book on your own with maybe a few things pointed out to you it is a better, more enjoyable read than if you tear it apart and have people around you have you dissect it.
This book was not a totally bad one. Some of the things that he experienced in the hospital (besides obvious boredom) were very sad and emotional. He really understood what was going on around him when he was “locked in”. How he recognized that his son was embarrassed about him was one of the examples that show this.
Overall, if I had to rate this book out of ten I would give it a five. The reason it got as much as a five was because of his accomplishment in making a book, not because of the content in the book. Now maybe I just did not get it. Maybe I was not thinking deep enough, but my reaction to The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was unsatisfactory.