Morrie

Love, family, community, wisdom and others are what will bring a person and the world a better life. Capitalist values create people to have selfish and empty lives and eventually leave you open to being hurt. Through Mitch's descriptive language telling us and describing the amount of family photographs around Morrie's house shows us how Morrie puts great emphasis and importance on family. Juxtaposition of setting and life style is significant in expressing this idea. Morrie has a very warm and close relationship with his family, hence he is happy but at the same time Mitch is distant and vastly separated from his family. Mitch has not seen and now not even spoken to his brother in months and months.
             Pieces of Repetition throughout the text are prominent pieces of evidence when proving Morrie's life views and ideology. With frequent comments referring to the O.J Simpson murder case morrie says, "their wealth did not buy them happiness or contentment." This shows us how morrie respects and adopts core values as opposed to materialistic values. We should express "core" values with others is one of Morrie's great philosophies that he tries to persuade Mitch to adopt as he is quite opposite and living in the materialists world. Morrie's ideology and Mitch's ideology are often juxtaposed. At the beginning of the text, this is used to reveal the two sets of value systems being "core" and "capitalist". Mitch's values are dominant values in the capital society in which he lives. Morrie's values are lost and marginalised values. They are core and traditional, Morrie would often use this line, "Neither money nor power will give you the feeling you are looking for". As the text progresses Mitch becomes ashamed of his values and begins to adopt Morrie's values system as his own. We as the reader as persuaded to react in the same way, because Mitch is the narrator with whom we are encouraged to bond with and adopt similar feelings.