The Tuesday with Morrie : Chapter 3-19

Novel review: Tuesday with Morrie: Chapter 3-19

The Student 

This chapter is talking about what was happened to much since the summer day when he did not keep in touch his promise. He lost contact with Mr Morrie . His first time encounter death is when his uncles dead. He start to looking for a job and then he got married with Janine. 

The Audiovisual 

In March of 1995, a limousine carrying Ted Koppel, the host of ABC-TV’s “Nightline” pulled up to the snow-covered curb outside Morrie’s house in West Newton, Massachusetts. Morrie wrote bite-sized philosophies about living with death’s shadow: “Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do”; “Accept the past as past, without denying it or discarding it”; “Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others”; “Don’t assume that it’s too late to get involved.”

The Orientation 

In the rental car onto Morrie’s street in west Newton, Mitch meets Morrie. Morrie talks to Morrie and then invited to Morrie's house. A few time later finally they were arrive at Morrie's house. Sometimes after that, Mitch and Morrie eat ogether in the cafeteria. Morrie talks instead of chewing, laughs with his mouth open, delivers a passionate thought through a mouthful of egg salad, the little yellow pieces spewing from his teeth. It cracks Mitch up. The whole time Mitch know him, he has two overwhelming desires: to hug him and to give him a napkin. 

The Classroom

The sun beamed in through the dining room window, lighting up the hardwood floor,  Morrie and Mitch had been talking there for nearly two hours. The phone rang yet again and Morrie asked his helper, Connie, to get it. She had been jotting the callers’ names in Morrie’s small black appointment book. Friends. Meditation teachers. A discussion group. Someone who wanted to photograph him for a magazine. A sick old man, a healthy, younger man, both absorbing the quiet of the room. For Mitch it was an embarrassed silence, but he seemed to be the only one embarrassed.

Taking Attendance 

Mitch went to London a few weeks later to covering Wimbledon, the world’s premier tennis competition and one of the few events he goes to where the crowd never boos and no one is drunk in the parking lot. Mitch thinking about Morrie whenever  he read anything silly or mindless. Morrie started a project called Greenhouse. Morrie  warns Mitch that money is not the most important thing.

The First Tuesday We Talk About the World 

Morrie was in his wheelchair by the kitchen table, wearing a loose cotton shirt and even looser black sweatpants. Morrie said, “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Let it come in. We think we don’t deserve love, we think if we let it in we’ll become too soft. But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said, ‘Love is the only rational act”. He repeated it carefully, pausing for effect. “‘Love is the only rational act”. Mitch nodded, like a good student, and Morrie exhaled weakly. Mitch leaned over to give Morrie a hug, then although it is not really like him, he kissed him on the cheek. He felt his weakened hands on his arms, the thin stubble of his whiskers brushing Mitch face. “So you’ll come back next Tuesday?” he whispered. slowly a discussion begins as Morrie has wanted all along about the effect of silence on human relation.

The Second Tuesday We Talk About Feeling Sorry for Yourself 

Mitch comes back the next Tuesday. They talked about life and  talked about love. They talked about one of Morrie’s favorite subjects, compassion, and why our society had such a shortage of it. Morrie says Mitch should be more open-minded.. Morrie said sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too even when you’re in the dark. Even when you’re falling.” 

The Third Tuesday We Talk About Regrets 

The next Tuesday, Mitch arrived with the normal bags and a sony tape recorder, because he wants to remember what they talk about and can listen to it later.  “Ask me anything,” Morrie always said. So Mitch wrote this list: Death, Fear, Aging,Greed, Marriage, Family, Society, Forgiveness and a meaningful life. He snickers, but the idea is momentarily appealing. Part of me is scared of leaving school. Part of me wants to go desperately. Tension of opposites. He watch Morrie as him reads his thesis, and wonder what the big world will be like out there. 

The Audiovisual, Part Two 

The exiting television program about Morrie, The Nightline Show is continues. They began to discuss their background in childhood. Morrie began to have difficulty speaking words and in a few month ltaer he might not be able to speak. Morrrie explained that he spoke using his torso and gave a gesture to use his hands. Then in the event Morrie get a lot of motivation to people who had sent theirs life story in the event.

The profesor 

Morrie lost his mother when he was eight years. After his mother’s death, Morrie and his young brother were sent off to a small hotel in the Connecticut woods where several families shared a large cabin and a communal kitchen. At nine years old, he has new mother, named Eva. Eva was a good stepmother. She loves Morry and his young broher so much. One day after Morrie back from the factory, he decided if when he was adult he want to become a teacher. The reason is because he would never do any work that exploited someone else and he would never allow himself to make money off the sweat of others. 

The Fourth Tuesday We Talk About Death 

The subject of this Tuesday was death, the first item on Mitch list. Before I arrived, Morrie had scribbled a few notes on small white pieces of paper so that he wouldn’t forget. Morrie said, “Everyone knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.” So we kid ourselves about death, I said. “Yes. But there’s a better approach. To know you’re going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time is better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you’re living.” How can you ever be prepared to die? “Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, ‘Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?’” He turned his head to his shoulder as if the bird were there now. Finally he conclude that “Learn how to die, and you learn how to live.”

The Fifth Tuesday We Talk About Family 

Morrie said, If you don’t have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don’t have much at all. Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, ‘Love each other or perish, without love, we are birds with broken wings.Raising a family was one of those issues on Mitch little list.

The Sixth Tuesday We Talk About Emotions

Morrie said, “Take any emotion love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I’m going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them—you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. 

The Professor, Part Two 

Morrie’s firs job was at mental hospital, but Morrie had decided the research world would be a place where he could contribute without exploiting others. Morrie observed that most of the patients there had been rejected and ignored in their lives, made to feel that they didn’t exist. They also missed compassion something the staff ran out of quickly. In addition many of these patients were well off from rich families, so their wealth did not buy them happiness or contentment. It was a lesson he never forgot. 

The Seventh Tuesday We Talk About the Fear of Aging 

Later that day, they talked about aging, Not once did he sees anyone who would pass for over thirty-five. Mitch tolds Morrie he was already feeling over the hill, watched what he ate, he has  gone from being proud to says his age because of all he has done so young, for fear he was getting too close to forty and, therefore professional oblivion. In contrast, Morrie had aging in better perspective. Morrie said,  “It’s very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.” 

The Eighth Tuesday We Talk About Money 

Mitch helds up the newspaper Morrie laughed, then shook his head. Morrie had always been taken with simple pleasures, singing, laughing, dancing. Now, more than ever, material things held little or no significance. When people die, you always hear the expression “You can’t take it with you.” Morrie seemed to know that a long time ago. Morrie said, “Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness. I can tell you, as I’m sitting here dying, when you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the feeling you’re looking for, no matter how much of them you have.” 

The Ninth Tuesday We Talk About How Love Goes On 

 Mitch cames to love the way Morrie lit up when he entered the room. Morrie did this for many people, I know, but it was his special talent to make each visitor feel that the smile was unique. When The last time Morrie saw his own father was in a city morgue. Morrie and his brother, David, would look out the window and see him leaning against the lamppost, and Morrie wished he would come inside and talk to them, but he rarely did. Nor did he tuck them in, nor kiss them good-night. Morrie always swore he would do these things for his own children if he ever had any. 

And years later, when he had them, he did. 

   

The Tenth Tuesday We Talk About Marriage 

Marriage, almost everyone Mitch knew had a problem with it. Some had problems getting into it, some had problems getting out. Mitch generation seemed to struggle with the commitment, as if it were an alligator from some murky swamp. Charlotte and Morrie, who met as students, had been married forty-four years. Mitch watched them together now, when she would remind him of his medication, or come in and stroke his neck, or talk about one of their sons. They worked as a team, often needing no more than a silent glance to understand what the other was thinking.

Charlotte was a private person, different from Morrie, but I knew how much he respected her, because sometimes when we spoke, he would say, “Charlotte might be uncomfortable with me revealing that,” and he would end the conversation. It was the only time Morrie held anything back. Morrie said, “there are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don’t respect the other person, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don’t know how to compromise, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can’t talk openly about what goes on between you, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don’t have a common set of values in life, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike. 

To be continue...