Discussion Topic
The setting in "Tuesdays With Morrie"
Summary:
The setting of "Tuesdays With Morrie" primarily takes place in Morrie Schwartz's home in West Newton, Massachusetts. The book details the weekly visits that Mitch Albom makes to his former professor’s house, where they engage in deep conversations about life, death, and various human experiences.
In Tuesdays With Morrie, is the setting specified and fully described?
There are multiple settings in Tuesdays With Morrie, the most prominent being Morrie's home as well as the university as it appears in Mitch's flashbacks. As the book moves forward, Morrie's room moves to the forefront, becoming the main physical location where the events of the book take place. In that sense, the setting is specified pretty clearly.
However--moving on to the second part of your question--I wouldn't call the physical setting "fully described." Albom leaves much to the imagination as far as filling in the gaps of a typical home goes. We get sparse details here and there, like hardwood floors, wicker chairs, and the persistent but undersized hibiscus plant that lives in Morrie's room, but the rest is not developed, because there's actually a much richer metaphorical setting that Albom does take great care and detail in describing.
The real setting of the story is Morrie himself,...
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and his deteriorating body. We get this in agonizing detail; for example, in the "Fourth Tuesday" section:
I noticed that he quivered now when he moved his hands. His glasses hung around his neck, and when he lifted them to his eyes, they slid around his temples, as if he were trying to put them on someone else in the dark (77).
Morrie's physical condition worsens continually throughout the book, making his body the actual stage upon which all the drama of the story occurs. The reader watches in horror as Morrie slowly looses control of his muscles and drowns while his lungs fill with fluid. But it's that impossible terrain that makes Morrie and Mitch's spiritual journey so significant. Despite overwhelming potential for defeat, depression, and resentment, these two men stubbornly continue their Tuesday lessons with the goal of preserving Morrie's legacy of wisdom, trying to come to peace with who they are and, above all, determining how to live.
It is incredible that these vast, earth-shattering things are happening in such a non-remarkable, sparsely detailed setting, which is really just a room like any other. But it makes sense when you consider the message of the text, which is that physical things (even our own bodies), are of little consequence in comparison to the great potential that exists in the human mind and spirit.
Describe the setting in the book "Tuesdays With Morrie".
For the most part, the story takes place in Morrie’s house, which is located in Massachusetts. The story is told here because Morrie’s ALS prevents him from going anywhere else. In spite of his disease, the mood is generally light, and Mitch enjoys talking to his former professor and reminiscing about his time at university. Overall, there is little description of the house itself, because Mitch tends to focus on Morrie’s condition while he narrates the story. However, we are given the impression of an inviting house with wicker furniture, a hibiscus plant, and lots of windows to let in the sunlight.
In terms of the time period, the story is set in the mid-1990s (apart from flashbacks to things that happened while Mitch was at university in the late 1970s/early 1980s).
In Tuesdays with Morrie, where and when does class take place?
In Mitch Albom’s book Tuesdays with Morrie, class takes place on Tuesday in the study of Albom’s former professor Morris “Morrie” Schwartz. Schwartz was Albom’s mentor while he was a student at Brandeis University. Schwartz tried to instill Albom with certain beliefs that went against what his parents and conventional society were telling him. While Albom’s dad wanted him to become a lawyer, Schwartz encouraged Albom to pursue his dream of being a musician.
After graduating from Brandeis, Albom finds success as a sports writer and journalist. Yet Albom realizes he has strayed from the principles of his mentor. Albom admits that he has grown self-involved and materialistic. “I traded lots of dreams for a bigger paycheck,” he confesses.
To reconnect with his values, Albom returns to class. This can be confusing. Albom doesn’t actually go back to school. He is not in a physical classroom with desks, a projector screen, and so on. He is in West Newton, Massachusetts in his former professor’s aforementioned study. While it might be more accurate to call these Tuesday sessions “visits,” “talks,” or “chats,” Albom goes with the class metaphor because he is learning so much from Schwartz: it is like he is back in school.
Albom’s Tuesday classes with Schwartz teach him, among other things, about giving out love, not giving into self pity, and facing death with dignity and without fear.