Case Analysis (Tuesdays with Morrie) Essay

CASE ANALYSIS: TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE I. Synopsis Morrie was Mitch’s favourite teacher. He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. One night, Mitch saw and recognized his old professor in a television show. He suddenly remembered the promise he made with his teacher, so he called him to set up a visit. Mitch began visiting Morrie every Tuesday and every time they meet Morrie taught Mitch lessons about life. The disease gradually overcome Morrie as days go by and during their last meeting, Morrie was nearing death. Morrie and Mitch hugged for the last time, and as they did Morrie noticed that Mitch is finally crying. Morrie died simply and peacefully with his family around one Saturday morning. II. Character Description Morrie is a former sociology professor who is compassionate, free-willed, and clever. He is suffering from a disease called ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) which prevents him from doing what he loves most, dancing. Mitch is journalist who is living a very fast paced life and succumbs himself in work that it consumes him. After reuniting with his old professor, he finally discovered the meaning of his life. III. Answers to case questions and requisites 1) a. Morrie’s father brought him to a factory to work and on that day he realized that he has asthma. So he vowed that he will never do work that used people and so he became a teacher with the help of his stepmother. b. Mitch’s visit with Morrie. It taught him how to pause for a while and rediscover the meaning of his life. c. Mitch after graduation who throw away his dream as a pianist and became a newspaper reporter. 2) a. Mitch taking interviews b. Mitch as a journalist c. Mitch being a sports writer and a boyfriend to Janine d. Mitch who has a lot of deadlines 3) a. The case of Mitch Albom, he was a journalist, a boyfriend, a taxpayer, a son, an employer, a student but most of all he was a friend to Morrie. b. Morrie as a former sociology teacher. 4) In the movie Tuesdays with Morrie, the primary group of Mitch is Morrie and his family because Morrie and Mitch exemplified a lasting and personal relationship. The work group of Mitch on the other hand stands as his secondary group. 5) The type of leadership roles that is very apparent in the movie is instrumental leadership and the leadership style that is also noticeable is authoritarian as illustrated by Warner, the boss of Mitch who gives him orders to get things done and demands him of his deadlines. 6) Bureaucracy was obvious in the area work of Mitch. It demonstrated characteristics such as specialization, hierarchy of offices as exemplified by Mitch’s boss and Mitch being his subordinate, and impersonality demonstrated also by Warner who didn’t have an idea of Mitch’s personal whereabouts he found about Morrie’s condition later in the story. 7) In the film, Mcdonalization is present through the use of laptops and telephones these are mediums of equipment used by Mitch to be efficient in his work as a journalist and to quickly transmit articles to his boss especially when meeting deadlines. The presence of airplanes also exemplifies a Mcdonalization society because airplanes are also under the control of computers, pilots merely oversee the process. IV. Conclusions There are a lot of Mitch’s around us whose fear of death disillusioned us into living life racing with the clock. I too am like Mitch whose fear of death made me live life as if tomorrow will never come. But I realized that it’s only when we know how to die that’s time when we know how to live. Sometimes, I do things that I thought would fulfil and would give meaning to my existence. And I thought I’m happy doing that, but I realized that I’m only living in the emotions of the moment that is after that moment passes and I’m alone emptiness starts to crawl back. And because I live life to the extremes, I often forget about the things that matters the most and I know now that all I need to do is to click that pause button and to use every moment of that time doing something that I will never regret that is to appreciate and value everything and everyone life has given me. In the film, Morrie said that when we live we need other people to survive and when we die we need other people to survive and we must love one another or die. Indeed it’s true, because all of us are connected to one another. In some ways, I, function for other people. I play an important part in my professors’ lives because without students their roles as teachers will never have meaning. Since we are connected with one another, everyone is dependent to other people so we must love and treat well those who give meaning to our lives because they are one of the reasons why we are still alive. After watching the film, I know now, what scares me most about death, its saying goodbye to someone whom I will never have the chance to say hello again. When I think about death, I automatically linked it with nothingness that is when someone dies they become nothing. But what I didn’t realized is that soon they will return to something larger afterlife and I can still greet them again. I know I can never command life to treat me well and be the way I want it to be because life has it’s own mind but if there’s one thing I know I’m sure of, that is I can treat life well and make the most out of it. Morrie perceived life as a rubber band it pulls us back and forth – pull as one way we think that’s what we want to do, pull us the other way we think that’s  what we have to do. For him, this is the tension of the opposites, we learn from what hurts us as much as what loves us. In the movie, Morrie taught us to love those people who have hurt us. He recommends that we try to understand them and be selfless even if we have developed a hardness of heart against them. We must learn how to forget all the pain that they’ve inflicted in us because even if we try to erase them in our lives, they are still a part of the person that we become. And one important lesson Morrie taught is learning how to forgive, now. We shouldn’t wait for our death sentence to come before we could finally find it in our hearts to forgive everyone and everything because every day is an opportunity to die and opportunity to live.