“ALS is like a lit candle: it melts your nerves and leaves your body a pile of wax.” The book where this quote came from, tuesdays with Morrie, is about a seventy-eight year-old man who is diagnosed with ALS, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. Sports writer, Mitch Albom, was one of Morrie’s favorite students at Brandeis University, and after sixteen years of Mitch and Morrie not keeping in touch, Mitch finally comes back to see his friend after he appears on a news telecast. Eventually, Mitch ends up coming over to see Morrie every Tuesday to talk to him and learn his wisdom on the meaning of life. In this novel, the author uses irony, dialogue, and figurative language to display the theme: following the popular culture is not always the best way.
One way the
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This quotation exhibits that there was really no such thing as a “living funeral”, until Morrie had one. The culture is so used to saying great things about people at their funerals, when they are not able to hear it. Morrie thinks this is a “waste” and so he has a living funeral to hear the wonderful things that people have to say about him, and so he can also say goodbye himself. Another way Albom portrays the theme is through dialogue. He states, “Weren’t you ever afraid to grow old, I asked? ‘Mitch, I embrace aging.’ Embrace it? ‘It’s very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth.’” This citation clearly demonstrates that Mitch, who is in the culture of the 90s, has a fear of aging, just like everyone else. However, Morrie has a different perspective. Instead of