tuesdays with
Morrie
Patsy D. Lewis, PhD
WCHS
English 10
Essential Questions
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Why do people fear living?
Why do people fear dying?
Why do people fear silence?
How do we live life with a purpose?
Standard
Assignments
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Reading:
Daily reading (no weekends)
Quizzes:
Daily quizzes (detailed)
Vocabulary: Content-oriented from text
Terms:
Application of Literary Terms
Writing:
Expect an essay or other example
Blogs:
Weekly blog responses
Project:
Something to encourage your creativity
Activities: Designed to make you analyze and think
Unit Test: Final test: Objective and writing format
“Morrisms”
• Once you know how to die, you know how to live.
• Why does silence make people so uneasy?
• Why do people only find comfort when they're
filling the air with words?
• How do you spare people's feelings by denying
them?
• Death ends a life, not a relationship.
• Dying is the only one thing to be sad over. Living
unhappily is something else.
“Morrisms”
• Love wins. Love always wins.
• Money is not a substitute for tenderness.
• Invest in the human family. Invest in people.
• Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Don't wait.
• You're not a wave, you're part of the ocean.
“Morrisms”
• What's wrong with being Number Two?
• Imagine there's a bird on your shoulder and every
day you ask it, "Is today the day that I die?
• Am I ready?
• Am I living the life I want to live?
“Morrisms”
• Am I being the person I want to be?
• Never do work that uses, hurts or degrades
people.
• Never make money off the sweat and pain of
others. The tension of opposites. We learn from
what hurts us, as much as what loves us.
Characters
Morrie Schwartz with Mitch Ablom
Primary Characters
Mitch Ablom
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30-something
Sports writer with a failing career
Graduate of Brandeis University
Wanted to be a musician but gave up the dream
Fast-paced life
Morrie Schwartz
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70-something
Former sociology professor
Recently diagnosed with ALS
Insists on living out each day to its fullest
Secondary Characters
Charlotte
• Morrie's caring wife
• Professor at M.I.T. throughout Morrie's illness
Janine
• Mitch's wife
• Joins Mitch on a Tuesday visit
• Professional singer
• Sings for Morrie and makes him cry
Peter
• Mitch's younger brother who lives in Spain
• Has pancreatic cancer
• Refuses any help from his family
• Reluctantly allows Mitch to reestablish a relationship with him
Secondary Characters
Ted Koppel
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Famous living television interviewer
Conducts three interviews with Morrie for Nightline
Surprised by Morrie’s questioning during interview
Eventually they become fast friends
Morrie deconstructed what he called Koppel’s
“narcissistic” TV persona almost moving Koppel to
tears during the last interview
What is ALS?
• Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
• Progressive neurodegenerative disease
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Affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord
• Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal
cord to the muscles throughout the body
• Degeneration of the motor neurons lead to death
• The ability of the brain to control muscle movement is lost
• Patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed
Quotes
• “After you have wept and grieved for your physical
losses, cherish the functions and the life you have
left.”
• “Because if you've found meaning in your life, you
don't want to go back. You want to go forward.”
• “Everything that gets born dies.”
• “Grieve and mourn for yourself not once or twice,
but again and again.”
• “It's not too late to... ask yourself if you really are
the person you want to be, and if not, who you do
want to be.”
Themes
The Rejection of Popular Cultural Mores in Favor of Self-created Values
• Each of Morrie's lessons contributes to a larger, all-encompassing message
that each individual, Mitch especially, should reject popular cultural values,
and instead develop his own.
Love Or Perish
• References to W.H. Auden quote, Morrie’s favorite
• Love is the essence of every person, and every relationship, and that to live
without it, as Auden says, is to live with nothing.
• Love brings meaning to experience, and that without it, one may as well be
dead.
Acceptance Through Detachment
• In his quest to accept his impending death, Morrie consciously "detaches
himself from the experience" when suffering becomes too much
• Morrie does not intend to stop feeling or experiencing in his detachment
• He detaches so that he may accept the impermanence of his life and
embrace his death, which he knows may come at any moment.
Motifs
The Media
• Sucks us dry of passion
• Destroys goodness and peace
Reincarnation and Renewal
• Facets of both life and death
• Morrie teaches that a person is ever-changing
• Morrie reveals that despite his old age, he is still changing,
as every person does until their dying day
Food
•Each Tuesday, Mitch brings with him a bag of food
•Food is central in their classes and to indicate the decline
Symbols
Pink hibiscus plant
• As Morrie's body deteriorates, so does the condition of the hibiscus plant.
• Used as a metaphor for Morrie's life and for life itself
• Represents the natural life cycle, which inevitably ends in death
Waves on the ocean
• Metaphor compares Morrie’s life to a small wave crashing onto the shore
• Morrie is comforted that he will soon return to something larger in the
afterlife
Morrie's bed
• Morrie's aphorism, "When you're in bed, you're dead," eventually comes
true
• Used as a symbol of surrender and death
Reading Guide
There will always be a quiz after every reading assignment.
Always.
Date
Day
Read
Chapter Name
Day 1
Xv – 25 (26)
Acknowledgments, The Curriculum, The Syllabus,
The Student, The Audiovisual
Day 2
26-59 (33)
The Orientation, The Classroom, Taking Attendance,
The First Tuesday, The Second Tuesday
Day 3
60-89 (29)
The Third Tuesday, The Audiovisual, Part Two, The
Professor, The Fourth Tuesday
Day 4
90-121 (31)
The Fifth Tuesday, The Sixth Tuesday, The Seventh
Tuesday
Day 5
123-151 (28)
The Eighth Tuesday, The Ninth Tuesday, The Tenth
Tuesday
Day 6
152-180 (28)
The Eleventh Tuesday, The Twelfth Tuesday, The
Thirteenth Tuesday
Day 7
181-199 (18)
The Fourteenth Tuesday , Graduation, Conclusion,
Afterward