PERPETUAL HELP COLLEGE MANILA

English Proficiency (Written and Oral Communication)

Plot Summary and Brief Analysis of
FOR ONE MORE DAY (Mitch Albom)

MARIANNE A. PALUSTRE
BSN N14-0103

PROF. MARIVIC D. TANEDO

04 August 2017
 Mitch Albom’s #1 New York Times Bestseller novel For One More Day is a story that gives
his readers a philosophical view on life. Similar to one of his previous novels, it is a novel that
makes us think of the choices we have made in our life and how they affect others and how
everything happens for a reason in our lives. The novel goes in an in depth look of what would
actually happen if we received “one more day” to meet over past problems and ghosts. Overall
it is a story of redemption by going back in time and fixing past mistakes and showing
appreciation for our loved ones.
The novel’s protagonist is Charley “Chick” Benetto, a former professional baseball player
whose career ended prematurely as a result of injury. Since then, Charley’s life has spiralled out
of control: unable to hold down a job and in serious financial trouble, he starts drinking heavily,
which leads to the breakdown of both his marriage and his relationship with his daughter, Maria.
In fact, Charley’s relationship with his daughter is so strained that he is not invited to her
wedding. He finds receiving a copy of Maria’s wedding photo in the mail too much for him
to bear and decides to commit suicide.
An extremely intoxicated Charley decides that he should kill himself in his old hometown
but, on his way there, he misses the exit, He swings around dangerously to drive down the wrong
side of the road, overturning his car in the process. He emerges unscathed, however, and
proceeds to walk town, climb to the top of the water tower, and jump off. When he wakes at the
foot of the tower, his mother, who has been dead for eight years, is standing over him.
This unlikely turn of events is the crux of the novel, it offers Charley a second chance to
spend time with his mother, to learn more about-and from-her that he did when she was alive.
Charley and his mother, Posey, spend the day together visiting a series of unlikely people,
characters who reveal something about Posey that Charley didn’t know. Along the way we get
an insight into Charley’s childhood and how his character was formed.
I learned that from a young age, Charley’s father, Lenny, forced him to choose between
his mother and his father. Charley decides to be a “daddy’s boy” and spends much of his early
life trying to please an angry and difficult man, to the detriment of his relationship with his
mother. Baseball becomes the means through which the two of them bond and Charley pursues
a professional career in the sport primarily to please his father. When his parents’ marriage fails,
Charley sees less and less of his father, and it is only when he gains a reputation as an athlete,
earning a baseball scholarship and the chance to join local team, that his father takes an interest
in his life. In fact Lenny encourages Charley to drop out of college to pursue baseball full-time, a
decision that will have negative consequences when Charley’s professional career comes to an
end. Given that Posey has always supported and encouraged Charley in his education, this is
another instance in which his mother and father are opposed in the novel.
 As Charley spends more time with his mother, he recalls how difficult it was to be the
child of divorced parents in America in 1950s. He and his sister were teased mercilessly, but their
experiences paled in comparison to his mother’s. Posey was a qualified nurse but she gave up
the profession after her divorce because, in the eyes of the men she worked with, she was “fair
game”, and she couldn’t bear the harassment. What Charley didn’t know is that his mother
subsequently established a cleaning business and worked as a maid to support her family. The
new discovery compounds his guilt and his sense that he had neglected his mother- the one-
person who was always there for him – when she was alive. Charley’s guilt takes the form of two
lists that are referred to periodically throughout the text: “Times My Mother Stood Up For Me”
and “Times I Did Not Stand Up For My Mother”.
During the day Charley spends with his mother, he hears a male voice calling his name.
The urgency of this voice increases as time passes and it is eventually what draws him back to
consciousness, where he finds himself lying in a paramedic’s arms. Just before he leaves his
mother, however, she takes him to visit his father’s second wife, the reason for the breakdown
of his parents’ marriage. The sequence is really about forgiveness and reconciliation, something
which Posey has encouraged Charley throughout their time together. In short epilogue, narrated
by Charley’s daughter Maria, I learned that after his near-death experience, Charley sobered up
and reconciled with his family. He died five years later.
For One More Day explores the possibility of spending time with someone we have lost.
It suggests the importance of appreciating the people we love now, so that we do not regret our
missed opportunities when they are gone. While themes of regret, mortality, forgiveness, and
family are prominent in the novel, Charley’s relationship with his father also raises interesting
questions about gender identity. Charley’s father fought in Italy in World War II and is a typical
man’s man. He doesn’t want his son to be a “mama’s boy” and he can only bond with is son
through sport, particularly baseball. Not only does this severely limit his own relationship with
his son, it also affects Charley’s relationship with his mother. In his desire to please his father he
turns away from a source of love and support that might have helped him through the difficult
times he faced. In this way, Albom’s novel suggests that stereotypes can have a limiting and
damaging effect on people’s identity and their relationships with others, something they might
later regret.