The given essay will summarize and analyze the commonalities of the message in A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom, and A Death by Stephen King. All three writings are historically separate and represent different genres, but they contain some similarities in the context.
Shakespeare’s comedy in five acts was written in the mid-1590s. There is an opinion that Shakespeare wrote his work in honor of St. John the Baptist Day or to the wedding celebration of a famous aristocrat. The play consists of several storylines, one way or another intertwined with each other. The main character is Theseus, who is getting married to Hippolyta. The story explores the value of love and how immortal gods relate to it. During the play, almost all characters manifest themselves both positively and negatively. It is likely that the author did not want to divide his characters into two camps because he wanted to show their helplessness.
Tuesday’s book with Morrie was published in 1997 in small editions and was a chronicle of the meetings that Mitch Albom had spent with his teacher. He is the main character of the story, who learns life’s greatest lesson about love and appreciation. The initial print run was thousands of copies. Further, the popularity of the book snowballed, and six months later, it took the first line in the list. The writing remained on the bestseller list for numerous weeks. Millions of copies of the book were sold; it was translated into multiple languages and is one of the most readable memoirs of all time (Albom 3).
A Death by Stephen King is a story written in 2015, where the main characters are Trusdale and Sheriff Barclay. The events take place in Dakota in 1889, where the murder incident begins the given detective story of the investigation and hero development.
Although these writings are highly different in context and environment, all of them aim to illustrate the importance of appreciation of life. The idea of the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a brief summary of which will interest the future viewer or reader, may cause controversy since the main purpose of this work is to entertain the public. One can only assume that as an idea, Shakespeare chose the view that human life is just a game. How exactly the game ends depends solely on the mood of the players.
Creating his play, the author set for himself one single goal – to give pleasure to the public. The work contains a moralizing or profound philosophy about love. The gods act as a symbolic demonstration of immortality, where they stop appreciating the process of living (Shakespeare 32). The story expresses the idea of love and how only mortality can lead to a profound appreciation of life and existence.
Furthermore, Morrie claims that loving is the most important thing people can do. The old man acts as a symbolic figure of wisdom and knowledge who teaches youngsters about the value of love and appreciation (Albom 23). Since society has other priorities, most people live in ignorance, focusing on routine and mediocre aspects as career achievements or material wealth, and ignore the most precious elements of our lives. This is not the way to achieve real happiness. Individuals should reject popular culture to determine their values and build their happiness. Cultural norms and customs should be reborn and built around the love of friends, family, and people around them.
Although Morrie does not offer humanity to accept such a culture blindly, he shows by his example that these aspects should be priorities in human life. The writing emphasizes that regardless of which cultural background a person adopts, no one can live without love. Therefore, the author suggests that people should appreciate life by outlining the most important things, such as love and family.
Moreover, Stephen King supports the idea of valuing life by showing the readers that death is imminent and how people can intentionally ignore the finality of existence. Trusdale is a criminal who acts as a symbol of ignorance. He denies his crimes until the very end, which was highly surprising and peculiar for Barclay. The Sheriff thought that people could become blind for the fact of their mortality that the criminal continued to claim that he was completely innocent.
It can resonate with the reader because all people deny the concept of death to a certain extent (King 5). Although it is depressing, entirely ignoring it can sometimes lead to unappreciative life. Therefore, a person stops prioritizing the most valuable ideas, such as love and happiness.
In conclusion, all three writings share a similar message despite their difference in the genre and the story circumstances. They explore the concepts of love and appreciation by demonstrating the immortality of gods, old man’s wisdom, and ignorance of death. The symbolism is present throughout the stories, which makes it easier to spot commonalities and similarities in messages. All three writings attempt to deliver the same information with different emotions and styles, such as comedy, a criminal investigation, and drama.
Works Cited
Albom, Mitch. Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson. Doubleday, 1997.
King, Stephen. A Death. The New Yorker, 2015.
Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Electronic Classics Series, 1999.