Taylor B. Strickland
Almgren
ENC1102
January 29, 2015
Morrie Schwartz, the titular character of Mitch Alborn's Tuesdays with Morrie, faced cultural collisions throughout his life. Mostly due to his rejection of mainstream culture. The reason for his rejection was both based off of circumstance and Morrie's own morals. As the son of poor Russian immigrants, he had little choice but to exist outside of “the culture”- total assimilation was nearly impossible. As a young Jewish boy, he already had a preexisting culture. A culture that naturally differed from the national one, with its emphasis on money, class, and Eurocentric whiteness - all qualities that the Schwartz family lacked. As a man, Morrie decided to forge his own culture – a response prompted by years of rejecting a culture that rejected him.
The first time Morrie experienced a clash of cultures occurred when he was only eight-years-old. It was after the death of his mother, during the funeral procession. A traditional Jewish affair, the “men wore dark suits” and the “women wore veils.” Morrie was embarrassed for his peers to see the procession; and he was even more embarrassed for them to see his family expressing their grief. All of which were products of his family’s attempted assimilation with the national culture. Of course, at his age, Morrie did not understand what culture was. He only knew that he felt ashamed of his and his family’s outward display of emotion, because the culture did not create a safe place for the grieving. Much to Morrie’s dismay, his father encouraged this aspect of the culture. He forbade any mention of Morrie’s late mother, and insisted in replacing her with a new wife – presumably to protect his own feelings. Morrie responded by vowing that he would never distance himself from his own children, or refuse them physical affection. He did not begin to truly reject mainstream culture until he was a teenager.
As Morrie began to leave childhood behind, his father, Charlie Schwartz, decided it was time Morries got full-time job. He brought Morrie to the fur factory where he worked, so that he would become familiar with the workload and standard procedures. Morrie hated the place. It was “dark and hot, the windows covered with filth, and the machines were packed tightly together, churning like train wheels.” It was there that enterprise had a smell, a sound, a look. It was anxiety mixed with sweat, exhaustion coupled with the screams of an uncaring manager. To Morrie’s delight, all of the positions in the factory were filled and there were none willing to release their own position to a newcomer. On that day Morrie made another vow: “he would never do any work that exploited someone else, and he would never allow himself to make money off of the sweat of others.” This response to unrestrained self-gain was a definite deviation from the national culture of self-gain
