Tuesdays With Morrie(pages 1-23), Week 1: Post A

VOCAB: 1. (page 7) ALS-Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, a disease that slowly breaks down the nervous system so that one's muscles stop working properly. This is the disease that Morrie is diagnosed with.
2. (page 21) narcissist-someone with inordinate fascination of one's appearance, excessive self-love.

LOGICAL/EMOTIONAL APPEALS:
1. Logical appeal-(page 11). The author talks about how Morrie's health slowly started declining, how he had to start using a cane to get around. This is a logical appeal because it is a fact of life, how as people grow older, their health gets worse. They are more dependent on other people, they depend on them for normal daily life things that you and I would not need any help to do.
2. Emotional appeal-(pages 3-4). In the book Tuesdays With Morrie, there are several parts in which the author stops to describe a memory-presented as a flashback. In the one on pages 3-4, Mitch Albom talks about his college graduation day. This is an emotional appeal because many people can relate to graduating and saying their goodbyes to teachers and friends. Since many can relate to this, it's probably emotional for those people. So, if people can relate and connect to the story in some way, they will be more inclined to read it and be affected by this memoir.
3. Emotional appeal-(page 8). For anyone who has dealt with someone close having a fatal disease, they understand what it's like to feel helpless. And like I said when I found out about my grandmother being sick, "The world and everything around us just should stop so that we can deal with this and grieve about it." I believe that all people have this feeling when having to deal with something like that. People can relate to it, making it an emotional appeal.

QUOTE:
"Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left?... He could not wither. He could not be ashamed of dying." This is the philosophy of the book at this point. The only thing that Morrie wants is to make the best of his last months. It has great significance because this book would probably not even have been written if Morrie had had a different opinion of his looming death. This is not just significant to the meaning of the book, but also to me. The last thing that I would want in my lifetime would be withering up and slowly deteriorating. I have personally seen this happen, so I definitely do not want this. Like Morrie, I'd like to really make the most of my last days. Spend time with old friends, talk about my feeling on death, and let people know that I was not ashamed of dying.

THEME:
I think the theme of this book so far is that you should make the most of your life. One really needs to approach life in the "Life is short" sort of way.

This has been an AMAZING book so far! I can't wait to finish reading it!