Tuesdays withMorrie

Divya SrinivasanPooja RavalPooja H. ShethPriyanka Mangal

About the Author

Journalist and sportswriter for the last 23 years, most with The Detroit Free Press

Received a bachelor of arts degree in sociology from Brandeis University in 1979 and a master’s degree in journalism and business from Columbia University in 1982.

Before moving to Columbia, he was a performing musician for a few years, playing in the U.S. and Europe.

Since receiving his master’s degrees he has been a professional journalist and also has a Radio Show WJR Radio.

Born: 1958 in Passaic, NJ

About the author: Cont.

His books, Tuesdays with Morrie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, For One More Day, and Have a Little Faith are all highly successful.

Main Characters Mitch

Mitch is a middle-aged man who is a sports writer. Mitch is very involved in his job, which includes money, a lot of traveling, and just basically centering yourself around your job. Mitch saw Morrie on a TV special and went back to visit that favorite professor he never kept in touch with. They have a class on Tuesdays, and the story tells about them.

Main Characters

Morrie

Morrie was Mitch’s college professor. He used to live a life full of dancing, helping others, and spending time with his loved ones. After he was diagnosed with ALS. Morrie stopped being able to do these enjoyable things he loved. He accepted the fact he was dying, and lived a life of helping others….

Main Conflict

The main plot of this story revolves around how Mitch Albom is trying to overcome his materialistic life. Mitch is increasingly unhappy as his occupation as a journalist and sees Morrie featured on “Nightline” one night as he is watching television. Thus started the two men's’ collaboration on Tuesdays with Morrie during Schwartz's final days in 1995.

First Tuesday: World

“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”

“Love is the only rational act.”

Second Tuesday: Feeling Sorry About Yourself

“How useful it would be to put a daily limit on self pity.”

Third Tuesday: Regrets

“The culture doesn’t allow you to think until you’re about to die. We ‘re so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money just to keep going. So we don’t get the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying: Is this all? Is this what I want?”

Fourth Tuesday: Death

“ Most of us all walk around as if we’re sleepwalking. We really don’t experience the world fully, because we’re half sleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.” “Learn how to die, and you learn how to live.”

Fifth Tuesday: Family

“ Family is not just love, but letting others know there’s someone who is watching out for them. What I call “ spiritual security”. Knowing that your family will be there watching out for you Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame.”

“ By throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive, in all the way, you can experience them fully and completely. Then you can say “ I recognize that emotion, now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.”

Sixth Tuesday: Emotions

“ It’s impossible for the old to envy the young. But the issue is to accept who you are and revel in that. You have to find what is good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now. I had my time to be in the thirties, and now is time to be seventy-eight.”

Seventh Tuesday: Fear Of Ageing

Eighth Tuesday: Money

“Money it’s not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute tenderness. Neither money nor power will give you the feeling you’re looking for, no how much of them you have.”

Ninth Tuesday: Love Goes On

“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”

“ Sounds like a song lyrics…love is how you stay alive.”

Tenth Tuesday: Marriage

“I’ve learned this much about marriage…you get tested. You find who you are, who the other person is, and how you accommodate or not.”

Eleventh Tuesday: Culture

“Every society has its own problems, the way to do it , I think , isn’t to run away. You have to work at creating your own culture.”

Twelfth Tuesday: Forgiveness

“Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others.”

Thirteenth Tuesday: Perfect Day

“Love is when you are as concerned about someone else’s situation as you are about your own.”

“ Death ends a life, not a relationship”

Fourteenth Tuesday: Good Bye

“ You… are a good soul”

Conclusion

The conclusion to the conflict is that Mitch overcomes his materialistic life. Morrie taught him a lot of things, one of which just to love life. Mitch now appreciates things, and takes the time to be with others. He tries to correct some of the things he did in his life, or didn’t do. But if Morrie Schwartz taught me anything at all, it was this: there is no such thing as “too late” in life.”

Critical Evaluation

Kind of Book: A self help book changing lives globally. The student-professor relationship depicts the love and respect the student has for his high school teacher.

Likes: The short stories categorized into each emotion are discrete giving a moral in the end.

Dislikes: The content is vague and the flow from one topic to another disconnected.

More illustrations could have been given.

Impact: Every reader would be able to relate to at least one anecdote, or one lesson of life. Comples some readers to read it time and again.

Usefulness: Useful for everyone irrespective of age, gender or any other demographics. Morrie’s overpowering optimism, will to live a fruitful life, perseverance, dedication to purpose (of being a teacher), or simply his infectious exuberance.

Message communication: A thought provoking, heart wrenching, enthralling, enriching at times even life changing book- Tuesdays with Morrie definitely makes a compulsive read and is strongly recommended.

A teacher to the last…