Tuesdays With Morrie

August 18, 1997
As a student at Brandeis University in the late 1970s, Albom was especially drawn to his sociology professor, Morris Schwartz. On graduation he vowed to keep in touch with him, which he failed to do until 1994, when he saw a segment about Schwartz on the TV program Nightline, and learned that he had just been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease. By then a sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press and author of six books, including Fab Five, Albom was idled by the newspaper strike in the Motor City and so had the opportunity to visit Schwartz in Boston every week until the older man died. Their dialogue is the subject of this moving book in which Schwartz discourses on life, self-pity, regrets, aging, love and death, offering aphorisms about each--e.g., "After you have wept and grieved for your physical losses, cherish the functions and the life you have left." Far from being awash in sentiment, the dying man retains a firm grasp on reality. An emotionally rich book and a deeply affecting memorial to a wise mentor, who was 79 when hedied in 1995.

somebody - “Tuesdays with Morrie” is really a very touching book. The author of this wonderfully described book is Mitch Albom. However, there is another writer who in a way helped Mitch construct the book: Albom’s old professor, Morrie Schwartz, the hero of this book. In the story, the author had lost contact with his college professor (Morrie) for nearly 20 years. But then one day, when Mitch saw Morrie again on the television, he found out that Morrie has Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). It was terminal by the time he had discovered the disease and he was going to die within a year. Caring about Morrie, the author came back to his professor again, and the last class of the professor began. It took place once a week, every Tuesday, in his house. The student was the author. The subject of the class was the meaning of life. It was taught from experience, not school learnings. The author wrote their class into a book-“Tuesdays with Morrie”- and it is the “final gift” for Morrie. I love this book. This is the book in which has impressed me most among all books I have read, probably because of Morrie. He was brave, optimistic and humorous. When he was facing the illness, he suffered great pain and he needed to be totally dependent on others. It was also very depressing for him to know that he was going to die soon. But instead of mourning and grieving, Morrie tried to live happily and meaningfully. He said jokes to delight others. He also thought himself to be very lucky despite his illness because he had love from his relatives and friends. He knew how to find what he had instead of keep thinking how unlucky he was. It was very difficult. In addition, Morrie was very clever, sensible and knew what he needed. He would not follow blindly the culture-chasing after, work for money only and neglect the most important thing in the world: love. He was able to realize that the culture was not right and tried to teach people to think what was really important to them, so that they will not wait until they are dying before they know what they need most is love, and money cannot provide comfort. Even when he was dying, he continued to do so by helping the author to write this book. It also showed that he cared for people he did not know and he used every minute of his life to do meaningful things. That’s why I respect him so much. This book includes the fourteen classes they had and each covered a topic, for example, forgiveness, family, the world. From these lessons, I have learned the importance of love. Anyway, the most important thing I have learned is that I have found my aim. In this book, the scene that impressed me most was that on the last Tuesday, Morrie was dying and he said goodbye to Mitch. Mitch cried, in his first time for many years. It was really touching by seeing the intense love between them, like a real father and a son. It definitely set a good example of how to love. The author has made this a good book by writing it well, through which the lessons of Morrie are taught more impressively. First, throughout the book, in between the last 14 lessons of Morrie, the author would include dome incidents happened about Morrie and Mitch 20 years ago. That made a comparison between the present and the past and we can know more about the old professor before he got the illness. Also, it occasionally quoted some famous speech related to the topic so that the lessons could be more poetic and impressive. Moreover, the author did not try to describe how much the professor suffered, how popular he was or how optimistic he was directly. Instead, he only expressed all these through the speech and behavior of the characters so that your heart is deeply touched by the truth. There...