Illness Narratives in Away from Her and The Diving Bell

The Body and Illness Narratives

The stories that ill people tell often emerge from their bodies. The body activates the need for new stories when illness disrupts the old ones. Whether still diseased or recovered, the body simultaneously serves as the reason, the theme, and the instrument of whatever new stories are told. As Arthur Frank (1997) argues, these personified stories have two dimensions: one individual and the other public.

The personal purpose of telling illness stories is to give voice to the body, so that the altered body can once again become familiar through narrative. At the same time that language seeks to make the body recognizable, the body escapes language. The ill body is certainly not mute — it speaks expressively through pains and symptoms — but it is incoherent. The body is often estranged, made strange, even as stories attempt to render it familiar again (Frank, 1997).

Away from Her: Love, Memory, and Alzheimer's Disease

Away from Her tells the love story of Fiona and her longtime husband, Grant, and how they struggle with the onset and acceleration of Fiona's Alzheimer's disease. Moments of clarity and ironic observation punctuate Fiona's decline. The story is set during a cold Canadian winter, and expansive fields of snow serve as a backdrop that emphasizes the harshness of Fiona's diagnosis.

Grant and Fiona are a retired couple living in rural Ontario. As Fiona begins to lose her memory, it becomes clear that she is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Throughout the film, Grant's reflections on their marriage are interwoven with his memories of his own infidelities, which ultimately shape his choices regarding his wife's happiness. When Fiona senses that she is becoming a danger to herself, she chooses to enter a nursing home. One of the facility's policies prohibits visitors during a resident's first thirty days. Though wary of this rule, Grant agrees to comply at Fiona's insistence. While driving to the nursing home, Fiona raises Grant's past indiscretions during his time as a university professor. Despite the uncomfortable circumstances, they make love before parting.

When the thirty days are up and Grant goes to visit his wife, he finds that she has forgotten him and has transferred her affections to Aubrey, a mute man in a wheelchair who has become her coping mechanism at the facility. Grant becomes a dejected onlooker, watching his wife grow closer to Aubrey during each visit. As time passes and Fiona still does not recognize him, Grant begins to wonder whether her dementia is, in some way, an act of retribution for his past indiscretions. Eventually, Aubrey's wife removes him from the home due to financial difficulties. This causes Fiona to sink into a deep depression, and her physical health begins to deteriorate as well.

Moved by his wife's suffering, Grant visits Aubrey's wife in an attempt to arrange for Fiona to see Aubrey again. He would rather see his wife content with another man than unhappy and alone. Aubrey's wife initially refuses, but the encounter leads to a tentative connection between her and Grant. Over time, Grant continues to visit both Fiona and Aubrey's wife. He eventually succeeds in bringing Aubrey back to the nursing home. Yet just before he brings Aubrey into Fiona's room, Fiona recognizes Grant and recalls the love she had for him. The film ends as they embrace.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Locked-In Syndrome and Self-Expression

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is the remarkable true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby. Bauby was a dynamic and successful editor-in-chief of the French magazine Elle, who believed he was living life to the fullest when an unexpected stroke left him almost completely paralyzed. As the physical realities of his condition stripped away most expectations for his future, he began to discover how his imagination, his rich memories, and his passions could help him attain a life without limits.

The film recounts Bauby's extraordinary life, with the first portion told entirely from his point of view. It begins as Bauby emerges from a coma he had been in for three weeks. Following an initially optimistic assessment from one physician, a neurologist explains that Bauby has locked-in syndrome — an extremely rare condition in which a person is nearly completely physically paralyzed yet remains fully mentally intact. Initially, the viewer hears only Bauby's thoughts, which are inaudible to those around him, and perceives the world through his one functioning eye. A speech-language therapist works to help him communicate as effectively as possible. Unable to speak, Bauby develops a method of communication by blinking his left eye while the therapist reads letters aloud, spelling out his messages one letter at a time.

Gradually, the film's narrow point of view expands, and the viewer begins to see Bauby from the outside. This includes glimpses of his past and his fantasies — beaches, mountains, the Empress Eugénie, and an elaborate banquet at which he imagines himself well. It is revealed that Bauby had already signed a book deal before his stroke, and he chooses to honor that commitment using his painstaking method of communication. A representative from the publishing house is brought in to transcribe his words. The resulting memoir describes what it is like to be trapped inside his body — imprisoned, as he saw it, inside a diving bell, unable to communicate with those on the outside.

Bauby's story is juxtaposed with memories and regrets from before his stroke. The film introduces the mother of his three children, whom he never married; his children; his girlfriend; his friends; and his elderly father. He reflects on people from his past whose lives parallel his own situation — among them a friend who was kidnapped in Beirut and held in solitary confinement for years, and his aged father, confined to his apartment because he was too frail to descend four flights of stairs. Bauby ultimately completes his memoir but dies of pneumonia ten days after its publication.

References

Away from Her. Dir. Sarah Polley. Lions Gate Entertainment, 2006. Film.

Frank, Arthur W. (1997). The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Dir. Julian Schnabel. Miramax Films, 2007. Film.