Life in Death: Morrie's Message

Emma Schaufus

Tuesdays With Morrie
Mitch Albom

Rethink life as you know it right now. How you view experiences and actions, your past, present, and future are all about to change, all because of a small professor from Brandeis University. As someone who enjoys fantasy and crazy fictional tales, I was shocked to find myself so enveloped in a story that consisted of nothing but real life. Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom is a book that truly forced me to think about how I thought about the world around me and actually take a step back and re-assess myself as a person. I don’t mean to imply that this book is so well done that it is life and soul changing, but it is done well enough that it caused an eighteen year old to ponder how they look at life.

The book is the type of book that everyone wants to read; it’s short and sweet. The reader goes on a journey through the life of the narrator Mitch and his interactions with his college professor Morrie Schwartz. After college Mitch moved away from Brandeis and moved on with his life, but suddenly gets startling news. Morrie suffers from the debilitating disease known as ALS and Mitch takes this news as a chance to reunite with his old professor. Mitch records the conversations he has with Morrie every Tuesday and relays the messages and the topic of discussion to the reader each week. With every meeting Mitch has with Morrie we get to see the heartbreaking way Morrie starts to get seriously affected by his ALS and how he handles the fact that he is going to die, and soon. Like Morrie explains to Mitch, “When you learn how to die, you learn how to live” (Albom 104), and that’s exactly what this book helps you to do: live.

I think that if a book makes you truly begin to think while reading it, that book is definitely worth sharing. Like I said before, I’ve never been a fan of non-fiction books, but this book was so real, so raw, so truthful that I wasn’t bothered by its content, but rather intrigued. I give full credit to the author for making the book read so smooth. It’s all too easy to make a biography-style book seem redundant and at times the annual, “On the       Tuesday we talked about         " got repetitive, and yet the content within each chapter varied every time. Morrie and Mitch discussed topics like their emotions and the ability to separate oneself from loved ones and that, “...detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it” (Albom 103). Although the topics discussed in the book are dense, they are handled delicately enough that someone much younger than I could get the general idea of what was being discussed. Honestly, I think this book could be interesting to anyone from 8th grade and up. I think it’s a perfect book for anyone one looking for a fiction read without all the fantasy. I could go on and on and on about how well done this book is because I thoroughly enjoyed it that much and can promise you will too.

I’ll end on a similar note to the way the book ends. Mitch explains to readers that in college his class with Morrie, “...met on Tuesdays. No books were required. The subject was the meaning of life. It was taught from experience. The teaching goes on” (Albom 192). Indeed the teaching does goes on, in this book and in many other ways, and I can agree with Mitch that Morrie taught me about one thing as well: life.

Below I have attached the trailer for the movie on the book. I haven't watched it (watching movies after I read a book kind of ruins the book for me), but I know some people enjoy it so, enjoy.