My sister, Kathleen = EthansNana introduced me to the below books and loaned me her copies.
Thanks Sent Out To You Kathleen ! Tuesdays With Morrie I woke up to a brown out today. “What to do … What to do? No no … I will not leave the house … No satellite connection … hmmmm … I’ll have to read”. In four hours I read Tuesdays with Morrie. It’s one of those easy yet absorbing reads that come so rarely in life. Now I am anxious to read Mitch Albom’s other two books that have been collecting dust on my shelf, The Five People You Meet In Heaven and For One More Day (which I see there is a Topic posted concerning this book).
Tuesdays with Morrie was a read I needed to regain an understanding and acceptance I was quickly loosing. Disheartening moments after moments where hardening my heart and hurting my spirit, I needed to be reminded that we must “Love each other or die”. Morrie stresses this quote and theme throughout the novel. He feels that an abundance of love and compassion is the highest sense of fulfillment that one can experience. The expression of love and compassion is very important to Morrie, especially since he lacked such expression in his childhood. With the early death of his mother, and his busy father, Morrie did not feel a sense of love until his step-mother Eva came into their home. Eva nurtured and cared for him as if he was her own child and Morrie carried this sense of love and compassion with him for the rest of his life. Because he was void of love at an early age, for the rest of his life he continuously offered his love and compassion to others.
Love is also important to Morrie as he is nearing the final days of his life. He feels that without the care of those who love him, he would perish. Morrie is not afraid of dying, as he so often tells us throughout the novel, but he hangs on because he wants to share his story and his lessons to Mitch and the rest of the world. Morrie lives long enough to express the essence of his teachings to Mitch (love, compassion and acceptance); he then allows himself to be released to death. He leaves Mitch and the readers, with his message that love brings meaning to life and that without it, we may as well be dead.
Another critical lesson the novel teaches is that acceptance can be reached through detachment. Throughout the novel Morrie, continuously talks about detaching himself from his experience, especially when he suffers from violent coughing spells. Morrie bases this theory of detachment, from a Buddhist philosophy. He feels that no one should cling to anything, and that everything that exists is impermanent. Through detaching himself, he is able to remove himself from his surroundings into his own consciousness. This way he is able to gain perspective in uncomfortable and stressful situations. However, Morrie does not use this method to stop feeling or experiencing; he actually wants to experience the situation fully. After he experiences a certain feeling he is then able to let go and detach himself. He practices this often during life threatening situations, such as his severe coughing spells, because he does not want to die upset or scared. He detaches himself so that he can accept these situations in his life and so that he will be able to embrace his death easier since it is approaching. Such a skill can ease so many pains. Morrie wants Mitch and the reader to learn the skill as they are living and not wait until they too are dying.
Tuesdays With Morrie is a novel that is accessible and yet engrossing. It is an easy read for a Saturday afternoon with life lessons to resonate in the readers mind. Through his lessons, Morrie was able to open Mitch’s and the readers’ eyes to see what really fulfills one in life.
August 16, 2007
The Five People You Meet In Heaven Mitch Albom’s novel The Five People You Meet In Heaven was another delightful read ... And I proud to say I didn't wait for another brown out to read it! Today, I read the book in around four hours. I’m beginning to enjoy these easy, yet insightful reads. I have spent too many years delving into the classics. Since around 1992, I have frantically fought to catch up on 30 plus years of lost reading time. I didn’t read literature until I chose a major in English. Now, I am always waiting for what I call
The Bachelor of Arts Petrol to show up at my door and take away my English degree. Well ... A classic novel can take me days and even months to finish. I will put it down and in many ways dread to again pick the book up. The two novels I have read by Albom were a joy. Maybe I’m learning that it is better to find joy in a reading selection rather than deep intellectual knowledge of a classic piece of literature.
Though
The Five People You Meet In Heaven is an easy read it has important themes. All the book's themes are apparent in Eddie's last act on earth. There are no random acts "the car key caused the accident that in turn kills Eddie, who sacrifices his life for the little girl's. During the war, even in the act of murdering his captives, Eddie had love and compassion for others" he thought he saw a movement in the hut and so, driven by the power of love (he had already miraculously let go of the anger he harbored for his captors), he investigated the hut, despite the fact that his body was aflame.
Eddie’s Five People: 1. Blue Man: no random acts/circular nature of life. Blue Man tells Eddie that "the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect" (48).
2. The Captain: when you lose something, you gain something else. "Sacrifice is a part of life", the Captain tells Eddie (93). "Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else (94).
3. Ruby: let go of anger. In Ruby's words: "Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harms we do, we do to ourselves" (141).
4. Marguerite: Although life ends, love endures; the power of love.
5.Tala: Eddie's life had a purpose; he kept children safe at the pier.
Tala taps into Eddie's deepest core when she asks him why he is sad. How does Eddie respond? (He "surrender[s] all barriers" and tells her that he "didn't do anything with his life," that he "accomplished nothing" (191). Yet, Eddie did accomplish great things in his life. He made the rides safe for countless numbers of children, children who, because they did not die at Ruby Pier, lived happy lives with their families. Eddie looks down and sees the children on the pier alive "because of the simple, mundane things [he] had done in his life, the accidents he had prevented, the rides he had kept safe…" (192).
Tala tells Eddie that he saved the little girl's life. The symbolism of the child's rescue is evident in the fact that Eddie ended his life doing what he had done with his entire life: saving a child. It is fitting that the child lived; it is his atonement for burning Tala. Despite everything that Eddie experienced and happened to him in his lifetime, he is ultimately a good-hearted person who has taken the deepest meaning of love into his soul: he cares for other people more than he does his own life.
As you can clearly tell, I enjoy the analysis of literature. In many ways I enjoy the analyses more that the reading experience. Maybe I will move past this desire to explore the literary elements and someday just read a novel and move on to the next. Now that would be reading bliss. But my next read is Albom's
For One More Day and I have a feeling I am going to want to dig into it too.
