The Measure Of My Days Book Report

Scott-Maxwell, F. (1979). The measure of my days. New York: Penguin Books.

The Measure of My Days is an autobiography by Florida Scott-Maxwell, which she had written in her eighties. The book explores the feeling and experience of one 's later years: when one feels both cut off from the past and out of step with the present; when the body starts to give up but the mind becomes more passionate than ever. The book offers a wide vision of the issues that we go throughout our lives: the struggle to achieve goodness; how to maintain individuality in a mass society; and how to emerge out of suffering, loss, and limitation and so on. The book is an important contribution to the literature of aging, and of living.

Scott-Maxwell’s book is compelling.

To be sure, there are some weaknesses in the book. The book is a collection of ideas that the author had jotted down so, the contain in the book are not related to each other which make difficult for the reader to grasp what the author want to say. There is no proper beginning and proper ending in the book which makes the book a bit incomplete. Nevertheless the book provides a valuable and absorbing window into aging. Although, the author discusses more about dependence, disability, loneliness, ageism, it is the thing most of the old people face. The author discusses the change old individual face, which is similar to the theory of Eric Erikson. The authors say that by time immortality does not matter which can be interpreted as being ready to die. The books territory is not just old people, ageing or ageism. The book also talks about some of the most disturbing conflicts of human nature, the need for differentiation as against equality, the recognition of the evil forces in our nature and her insights are challenging and illuminating. The vision that emerges from her accumulated experience of life makes this a remarkable document that speaks to all