There are multiple settings in Tuesdays With
Morrie, the most prominent being Morrie's home as well as the university as
it appears in Mitch's flashbacks. As the book moves forward, Morrie's room moves to the
forefront, becoming the main physical location where the events of the book take place.
In that sense, the setting is specified pretty
clearly.
However--moving on to the second part of your
question--I wouldn't call the physical setting "fully described." Albom leaves much to
the imagination as far as filling in the gaps of a typical home goes. We get sparse
details here and there, like hardwood floors, wicker chairs, and the persistent but
undersized hibiscus plant that lives in Morrie's room, but the rest is not developed,
because there's actually a much richer metaphorical setting that Albom does take great
care and detail in describing.
The real setting of the
story is Morrie himself, and his deteriorating body. We get this in agonizing detail;
for example, in the "Fourth Tuesday" section:
readability="10">I noticed that he quivered now when he moved his
hands. His glasses hung around his neck, and when he lifted them to his eyes, they slid
around his temples, as if he were trying to put them on someone else in the dark
(77).Morrie's physical
condition worsens continually throughout the book, making his body the actual stage upon
which all the drama of the story occurs. The reader watches in horror as Morrie slowly
looses control of his muscles and drowns while his lungs fill with fluid. But it's that
impossible terrain that makes Morrie and Mitch's spiritual journey so significant.
Despite overwhelming potential for defeat, depression, and resentment, these two men
stubbornly continue their Tuesday lessons with the goal of preserving Morrie's legacy of
wisdom, trying to come to peace with who they are and, above all, determining how to
live.It is incredible that these
vast, earth-shattering things are happening in such a non-remarkable, sparsely detailed
setting, which is really just a room like any other. But it makes sense when you
consider the message of the text, which is that physical things (even our own bodies),
are of little consequence in comparison to the great potential that exists in the human
mind and spirit.
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