Hw 24

Albom, Mitch. tuesdays with Morrie. United States : Doubleday, 1997. Print

Precis

Mitch is becoming more involved in Morrie life. Morrie is venting his frustrations about the culture in the world.

• ““When you’re in bed, you’re dead,” Page. 153 

I agree with this statement to a point were I draw the line. If you are dying in bed, can’t move and sleep for more than 13 hours you are dead. If you are in bed and you know what’s going on and you involved in life in some way you are alive.

• “I thought about how much time we spend trying to shape our bodies, lifting weights, crunching sit-ups, and in the end, nature takes it away from us anyhow.” Page. 154

This line really hit on a topic I think about a lot. As people we tend to follow social practices like wanting to have a “perfect body”. We waste hours at a gym when we could be living our lives. But why do we care enough to get that body? It’s all for the acceptance of others.

• ““And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money god. It is all part of this culture.”” Page. 154 

Morrie is right in saying that when you are threatened you only look out for yourself because when scared you make sure your safe.

• ““Every society has its own problems,” Morrie said… “The way to do it, I think, isn’t to run away. You have to work at creating your own culture.”” Page. 156 

Don’t run away from your problems, solve them with people who care for you.

• ““There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things”-he sighed– “These things I do regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do?”” Page. 164 

I think the same thing why do people need pride. What does it give us as a society? Pride is something one person holds by himself or herself.

I have tried to build my own culture with my friend but it always seems to lead to following another cultures ideas and values, the teen culture. I try not to conform to what the norms of the teen culture are, like acting a certain way but it’s hard to do. Morrie was right in saying you need a community to build a culture with not just friends.

HW 23

Albom, Mitch. tuesdays with Morrie. United States : Doubleday, 1997. Print

Precis 

Morrie is teaching his last class ever. The fourth week of his class was on death. Morrie is trying to convey what death really is to his class.

• ““Everyone knows they’re going to die, he said again, “but nobody believes it. If we did, we did we would do things differently.”” Page. 81 

I believe that what Morrie’s said is true but by doing things differently would that make people less out going and more protective so they would not die or more out going and take more risks with there life.

• ““That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you’re living.”” Page. 81 

This statement is a puzzle because everybody thinks there involved in there life while there living but what I believe Morrie is trying to convey is you should be more aware of your life as you living it and not act a zombie following a simple routine. 

• ““The truth is Mitch,” he said, “once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.””  Page. 82 

This is a powerful line I thought about because most people think about living for most of their life till their about to die when they think about how there going to die. Is it then they are actually supposed to live life? It is hard for a person to think about death in their life because they don’t want it to come but what Morrie is trying to say is that if we thought about death earlier and were not scared of it, then we could live life to the fullest. 

• ““The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted.” He nodded toward the window with the sunshine streaming in. “You see that? You can go out there, outside, anytime. You can run up and down the block and go crazy. I can’t do that. I can’t go out. I can’t run. I cant’ be out there without fear of getting sick. But you know what? I appreciate that window more than you do.”” Page. 84 

Morrie can ‘t go out side anymore with our fear of getting sick. So threw windows he sees everything and appreciates the little time he is outside because for most of the time he is not able to be out side. It’s like being in prison. If you live in prison and have no life, watching the outside world, blocked from going to it and you finally get to leave. You at fist tended to appreciate everything around you because you know what life with out all of it is like.

• ““This is part of what a family is about, not just love, but letting others know there’s someone who is watching out for them.”” Page. 92 

Family is not just loving people you are related to but knowing that someone always is there to help you.


When I was younger I thought about death a lot. I would ask my mom questions about it because death scared me and she would tell me that it was no good for someone my age to think about death when they have their whole life to live. But those thoughts made me out going and want achieve knew thing because in away I was still scared of death but I knew that it would come no matter what I did and if I didn’t have fun before it came then it was not worth waiting for.

Hw 22

Albom, Mitch. tuesdays with Morrie. United States : Doubleday, 1997. Print.

Precis
Mitch’s best friend and his former teacher, Morrie, had been diagnosed with ALS, an incurable disease. Morrie lives out his days trying to reconcile with death.

• “Charlotte had a million thoughts running through her mind: How much time do we have left? How will we manage? How will we pay the bills? My old professor, meanwhile, was stunned by the normalcy of the day around him. Shouldn’t the world stop? Don’t they know what has happened to me?” Page. 8

I think it’s wrong that Charlotte thinks about money right after the doctor gives Morrie’ s diagnosis and not about how her husband is feeling about the certain death he faces. Morrie had realized that the cliché about death on T.V was not true. The world does not stop moving for any man.

• “I may not live to finish the semester. If you feel this is a problem, I understand if you wish to drop the course.” Page. 9

Morrie is starting to accept death and is not afraid to tell people.

• “Accept the past as past without denying it or discarding it…” Page. 18

I loved the insight that Morrie stated, the past is the past but you can’t forget what happened. I feel this is a good lesson for life because people learn from their past no matter how bad it is.

• “Several of Morrie’s friends and family members had gathered to meet Koppel…”

           Page. 19

I feel that this quote show a dominant social practice we were talked about in class. Friends and family of Morrie only come to see him because a celebrity was interviewing him. They didn’t come to see how he was feeling.


Tuesdays with Morrie portrays that people dying reflect on their life. They think about all the lessons they learned in their life and try to pass that knowledge on to other people that can learn from it. It is also a time you spend with you closest friends and family to keep you as happy as you can be.

Hw 21 Comments

Max-

Max even though were not in class I still feel from the notes you understood what Evan's mom was going threw. Your are experience with you dad has put you in a place close enough to a person fighting with cancer to feel Beth's pain. I do agree with your other statement that medical care should be free. But it is a system that is not perfect. Beth did everything she could to get care faster but in the imperfect world we live in even a super power cant save everyone.

Alex-

Alex I understand that sickness can sneak up on some one but that happens because science is not advanced enough to pick up everything in a persons body. I liked your incite on how people don't know what happens after death but they take comfort in knowing that there with there love ones. I never really thought about death in that way. But I don't agree that religion is being taken over by science. I don't think you have any evidence to prove that.

Hw 21

• Beth’s husband had trouble sleeping on his back so Beth came up with an ingenious idea to solve his problem with out going to the hospital. Sleeping half way on a table and half on a bed. 

• Beth did not want other people taking care of her husband such as hospice. She felt that only loved ones should take care of a person so close to their death. Beth and her son Evan took care of her husband best way possible, together. 

• At death the room felt as still and as silent as it could be. 

• The toll of a loved one dying helps people feel a sense of how we are not immortal. 

When Beth said, at death the room felt as still and as silent as could be. I understood what she was talking about. I have had many people in my family die and I have felt this time and time again. But just recently I watched my grandma pass away slowly. It was very painful for me to watch and when her time came it felt like I was in a tunnel. My mind linked to hers, nothing could get in or out. It was silent in the room. I stood  watching her with my thoughts about her life and her last words. I couldn’t feel movement in the world. Until the link was naturally broken and I got to the point of acceptance. It was time to say my final good-byes, where I could touch her and she still would feel warm. That feeling is almost indescribable; there is a sense of power that when I close my eyes I can feel in the room, in silence and in my thoughts.

The toll of a loved one dying helps people feel a sense of how we are not immortal. When Beth said this statement I felt it with great power in my heart because I too have the extreme feeling of not being immortal. In the last couple of years I have seen my family members die making me lose my childhood dreams of living forever. The thing that made me feel immortality was never possible was when I had a friend commit suicide. Having someone that I knew my age dying put death in the front of my mind. This scared me because I am afraid to die. I always thought if I could, I would be immortal but then I know everybody I love would die one day and I would still be here. Having to deal with the pain of my loved ones dying and me staying alive is too hard for me to handle. Still I don’t know how to accept death.

Beth sparked ideas of joy and sadness in my eyes. She made me think of what good someone could do for the world but also how fast the world can "kill" you. She made me think about my family an actually help me think about death. From her confidence to speak in class it has made me feel better about my ability to write about my "death life".

Hw 19

Both my parents have lived to see death and illness more times then they want to admit. They have seen it in war, and in their family life. It stems from illness that cannot be healed. My parents understand death in a way I can’t imagine. Even thought I have seen death and illness so much in my life already.

My dad has witnessed death in ways I wish upon no man. He was drafted in to the army to serve in North Korea in 1969 while his brother was sent to the Vietnam. When he was there, he was fixing DMZ (Korean Demilitarized Zone) signs a lot of the time and one day his unit was ambushed. He lost his best friend in the army in the first two minutes of the ambush and he was pined down for seven hours. He had to watch his best friend on the ground dead for this time. He analyzed everything he could think of. One of the biggest things he thought about beside his family was the idea of fate and if he believed in it. He ended up accepting that fate was real and accepting that if he died it was fate. Right then he was able to reconcile with death, face to face. He also knew that if North Korea attacked South Korea at full strength there would be no reinforcements ready to help the front line and he would have been dead in five minutes.

But his brother saw more death then my father would have ever scene. He was killing not only men but also children. This had a physiological effect on him and when he got back home my father knew he was changed in way that was not good for him. Also coming home his brother had to live with everybody in America being mad at him. Threw his pain he had five different types of cancers that not only my father watched him go threw but I did as well. He survived it all and he is living in Florida.

My dad saw even more illness and dying coming home from the war, when his father had stomach cancer. His father was a world war two veteran and by the time my grandfather saw a doctor he was incurable so he stayed at home to live out his life with his kids.

My mom lived with a mother that suffered from breast cancer. When my mom was 12 her mother was diagnosed with the cancer. Three long years later her cancer was dormant and the family was happy but it came back two years later this time proving incurable. My grandmother who I never meet lived her life out at home never going to the hospital again till she died. She lived out her days at home with her kids. Just recently the rest of my mom’s family has died, first with her brother whom suffered then died form lunge and brain cancer. He stayed at home to die not going and living at the hospital. Then her father died from a heart attack.

Unlike the modern social practice of dying in a hospital my grandparents died with their closest love ones at home. However they did go strait to the hospital when they were sick but they were determent not to make it a home. Both my grandparents were very religious so following their religious social practices my grandfather had a very catholic funeral and my grandmother had a very Jewish funeral. To this day my parents are not very religious but my mom want to be breed religiously and my dad wants a religious ceremony but to be cremated. They have not decided whether they want to follow the social normal if dying in a hospital or be like their parents and do their own thing.

I have scene a lot of death and illness in my family and I know I will follow the social normal and go to the doctor when I’m sick and I would like to die at home but only time will tell what I may do.