Tuesdays With Morrie: The Main Themes In The Book (Book Review Sample)

Tuesdays with Morrie
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Introduction
Tuesdays with Morrie, authored by Mitch Albom, is a narrative depicting a love story between a man and his college professor, called Morrie Schwartz (Albom, 2009). Morrie, who is a professor at Brandeis University, has spent most of his life teaching sociology in the university. He is an excellent lecturer and teachers according to the narration and only retires when illness comes knocking. On the other hand, Mitch is portrayed as a good man surrendering his vision of having a career in the music industry, professional success and material wealth. He values money over love and has grown disillusioned (Albom, 2009). After spending his entire time working and neglecting Janine his wife, he finds himself in the end jobless and without a steady source of income. The unionized strike brings him to reality by asking several questions about choices he has made in life.
The story written in 1997 and describes a friendship that transformed his life. The narrative is a true story capturing the wisdom and compassion of a man who only knowing good in his heart and he has lived his life to the very fullest until the last breath of his life, a life happily lived. When Mitch learned that Morrie was unwell, he began the last class of the life of Morrie, and together, they tried to reveal the “The Meaning of Life (Wang, 2006).” Mitch Albom, who is the narrator of the book, recalls how he graduated from Brandeis University in 1970’s spring. After receiving his diploma, he approaches Morrie Schwartz, who was his favourite professor, presenting him with a monogrammed briefcase (Wang, 2006).
Most of the sociology courses that Mitch took while at Brandeis were taught by professor Morrie. He promises Morrie of keeping in touch in the middle of him crying. He fails to fulfil this promise (Wang, 2006). Many years after Mitch has graduated from the University, Morrie is forced into forfeiting dancing which is his favourite hobby after being diagnosed with ALS, which health professionals call a debilitating disease. According to the narration, after realizing the sickness, Morrie’s soul is left perfectly awake but imprisoned inside his body. Charlotte, Morrie’s wife is forced to care for him but keeps her job at MIT since he insists. Mitch feels frustrated with the life he has chosen sixteen years after his graduation from Brandeis.
His uncle passes away after suffering from pancreatic cancer, and after this, he abandons his failing music career to become a highly paid journalist for a paper in Detroit (Pagano, 2016). Despite promising his wife that they would have children, the narrator spends a lot of time at work especially in his reporting responsibilities and assignments. One night, as Mitch is going through the television channels, he recognizes Morrie’s voice (Wang, 2006). Following the television appearance from his professor, Mitch calls him and travels to West Newton, Massachusetts where Morrie lives. When he drives up to the professor’s house, he delays in greeting him since he is speaking on the phone with the company producer, a decision that he would later regret.
In reading through the narration, several lessons are learnt in the characterization and in the themes brought out. The first lesson that the audience can draw from the story is the need to reject or overlook popular cultural values and embrace self-created personal ones. Each of the lessons learnt from Morrie contribute to a bigger, encompassing all message that each person, and especially Mitch, should reject popular cultural values and instead embrace and develop a personal one (Wang, 2006). As Morrie describes or sees it, popular culture dictates humanity and hence communities sometimes end up suffering. In his own account of life. Morrie flees the concept of cultural dictatorship and creates his own culture which is based on open communication, acceptance, and love.
As a revolt against the superficiality, violence, and greed driven in the media, Morrie develops his own culture (Wang, 2006). As a way of influencing the decisions of the narrator, he encourages him to free himself of the dictatorial, corrupt culture in favor of his well-being, and after starting to reassess his life, Mitch starts to rediscover fulfilment. The theme of perish or love is evident (Wang, 2006). As one of the most significant lessons to his student, Mitch, Morrie recites a quote by W.H. Auden, his favourite poet. The poem says “in the absence of love, there is a void that can only be filled by loving human relationships” (Wang, 2006). According to Morrie, when there is an abundance of love, people can feel and experience a huge sense of fulfilment.
Morrie had fourteen Tuesday lessons with Mitch. Throughout these lessons, Morrie explains that love is the essence of every relationship and every individual (Seo, 2015). Therefore, as it is described by Auden, to live without love is like living with nothing. The positive significance of love in his life becomes particularly clear to the professor as he approaches death, for without the meticulous care of those who love him, and those he loves, he would perish (Wang, 2006). The audience can see Morrie clinging to life not because he is afraid of death, or because he is scared of what happens in the afterlife, but because his greatest wish of death is to share his story with his student, Mitch, so that the story can be shared to the rest of the world.
The renowned professor who enjoys a lot of admiration from Mitch clings to life just long enough to divulge the importance or the essence of his story (Wang, 2006). He then releases himself to death, leaving his audience and Mitch with the message that love brings meaning to life experiences, and that without love, one may be as well dead. Acceptance through detachment is a clear message that the audience can take home. Sometimes, it is important to accept things through detachment (Wang, 2006). As Morrie struggles with accepting his impending death, consciously, the professor detaches himself the different experiences. The detachment from experience is seen when he is suffering from the violent coughing spells.
These coughs, according to the narrator, come with the possibility of him breathing last. The method of detachment derived by Morrie comes from the Buddhist philosophy that individuals should not cling to things, as everything happening or in our possession is impermanent. The audience learns several lessons from the Buddhist philosophy. In the process of detaching, the audience can see Morrie stepping out of the tangible surroundings and getting into an individual state of consciousness for two reasons: becoming composed in stressful situations, and gaining perspective (Wang, 2006). Morrie does not intent to stop experiencing or feeling in his detachment, but rather, interests himself in experiencing wholly.
The professor does not want to die feeling angry or upset at anyone, and in those moments described as frightening, he detaches as a way of embracing his death and accepting the impermanence of life, which he acknowledges may come at any time. In Tuesdays with Morrie, the role of the media in the society is explicitly expressed. According to Mitch’s experiences, the media is portrayed as being inherently evil. The media institution sucks Mitch dry of his ambition and passion, and feeding the public ...