Before analyzing the book's contents, perhaps it might be wise to observe one obvious feature of this book: it is a testament to a man's tenacity and passion. The situation that the author writes about in this memoir is mind-bending and difficult to imagine. One day, he was a healthy man living a normal, sophisticated life. The next day, he is so paralyzed by a stroke that he cannot move his body, his face, or speak. His entire ability to communicate with the outside world is taken away, and he has no way to communicate to his friends and family that he is actually lucid.
In a way, we see this writer condemned to a strangely specific fate—almost like a thought experiment in a philosophy class: He is unable to communicate, but he is still able to perceive. His consciousness is limited only in the ability to express itself. That makes this an automatic commentary on existential isolation, because even when he miraculously figures out a way to communicate, eventually writing this book, there is still an existential truth that the situation exposes.
In the contents of the book, we read what that existential truth is. He writes that each person is condemned to a wonderful experience of life, full of good and bad, and extremely sophisticated and complex, and for what? By what force? His conclusion is that this experience of reality is inherently religious. His writings are similar to the writings of religious mystics and martyrs, because the strangeness of his new reality gives him a mystical experience that absolutely mandates some kind of enlightenment. Such a curious man as he is must wonder why this is happening to him, and then from there, why was any of it ever happening at all?
