Learning Perspective: The Memoir Genre in "Tuesdays with Morrie" Dylan Alexandra Folsom College

A memoir is typically a written account of a personal experience. It varies from an autobiography in that it usually focuses on a single, monumental period in the author’s life. When Mitch Albom penned his touching and insightful memoir, Tuesdays With Morrie, he recounted the precious moments that he was able to spend with his college professor, Morrie Schwartz, who was also his former mentor with whom he had lost touch. He characterizes in great detail Morrie’s last few months of life as he battled the debilitating and terminal disease ALS. Albom’s account of his reactions and the impressions he draws from his time spent with Morrie provide the reader with a clear image of who he is as the narrator. Mitch Albom’s use of extreme detail and imagery to promote meaning, his unique writing structure and the in-depth reflections he weaves throughout this story are particularly effective in conveying just how profound a time this was for him, deeming this a legitimate memoir, appropriately centered around a man who impacted him tremendously

Mitch Albom quickly establishes the fact that Morrie is quite ill and approaching death. In fact, within the first line of the memoir he explains, “the last class of my old professor’s life took...