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Video Summaries of Tuesdays With Morrie
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1-Page Summary of Tuesdays With Morrie
Overview
Mitch Albom decides to visit his professor, Morrie Schwartz, after seeing an interview with him on television. Morrie has ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), a disease that causes degeneration of the motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Mitch promised sixteen years ago that he would keep in touch with Morrie but failed to do so until now. They meet for fourteen Tuesdays at Morrie’s house to discuss life lessons before Morrie dies from ALS. The book discusses topics such as death, love, culture, marriage and regret among others while making you think about your own life and ponder aging, forgiveness family compassion and mentors in life just as Mitch does during the course of the book.
The Curriculum – The Audiovisual
Summary of The Curriculum: Mitch Albom is a college student who reconnects with his old professor, Morrie Schwartz. Morrie has terminal ALS and uses the last months of his life to teach Mitch about life. They meet on Tuesdays for lessons in love, work, community, family, aging and death. At the end of their time together there will be a funeral instead of graduation because Morrie’s final lesson to Mitch is that we all must die someday and it’s important to know what our purpose was while we were alive.
Then the book flashes back to Mitch’s point of view. He remembers meeting Morrie at his college graduation in 1979, and he introduces him to his parents. As a gift, he gives Morrie a briefcase monogrammed with his initials.
The antagonist in the book will be Morrie’s disease. The disease will take away his ability to dance, and eventually it’ll kill him. He has a death sentence of months left to live, but he chooses not to be ashamed of dying and decides to make the most out of what time he has left.
Morrie Schwartz is a professor of sociology who has been diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. He refuses to be ashamed and ask for help, even though he can’t do the little things anymore. His positive attitude draws a lot of visitors to his home, where they share their feelings about Morrie as he lies in bed. Albom foreshadows that the most unusual part of Morrie’s life was about to unfold when Morrie held his living funeral in his house so people could tell him what they thought about him before he died.
The author, Mitch Albom, is the protagonist of this story. He was a college student who had been good friends with Morrie Schwartz in his early 20s. Unfortunately he lost touch with him and didn’t see much of him for many years after graduation. After his uncle died from cancer, Mitch realized that life is short and you need to make something out of it before it’s too late. So he went back to school and got a master’s degree in journalism so that he could pursue his dream job as a sportswriter at the Detroit Free Press.
Mitch graduated from college with a degree in journalism and took the first job that he was offered, as a sports writer. He eventually moved to Detroit and worked for the Free Press newspaper, where he became very successful. Mitch got married after dating his wife for seven years; he never had children because he was always working on deadlines. He thought about his old professor occasionally but never visited him or called because of how busy he was with work. But one night while channel surfing through television programs, Mitch saw an interview by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who said that people should be judged by their character rather than their color.
Mitch was watching television when he saw his old professor on “Nightline” with Ted Koppel. Morrie had been writing essays about life and sharing them with friends, which prompted a reporter to write an article that got published in the Boston Globe, prompting ABC News to send Koppel out for an interview. Before doing the interview, Mitch wanted to get to know him better off camera so they could have a more natural conversation during the interview. He wasn’t star struck by the news anchor; rather he wanted to know what values were important to him: family, faith and heart. He told Koppel that he thought he was a narcissist but did the interview anyway because it would help his students learn from their hero’s wisdom. During the interview Morrie tells Koppel that his biggest fear isn’t dying but getting older and not being able to wipe himself after using the bathroom.
