Five People You Meet In Heaven

The book, The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom is a book full of reflection, life lessons, and experiences of the joys and sorrows that accompany life. The Five People You Meet in Heaven is about an old man named Eddie who meets his death after an accident at a theme park. On his path to heaven, Eddie meets five people from his life who he had an impact on, or who impacted him. These people teach Eddie important lessons before he is ready to move on. In the portion of the book about Eddie’s 2nd person, his captain, Eddie learns more about his life at war. The movie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven is very similar to the book at this part. In the section about war, in both the book and the movie, Eddie relives his experiences

People don’t realize the most important moments in life until they have passed, and they have time to look back on them and realize how these moments have shaped them. In “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” by Mitch Albom it tells the story of Eddie’s moments and how they have reflected and shaped his life. The three most important events in Eddie’s life are the day he meets Marguerite, the shadow he sees in the barn, and the day he is shot in the leg.

Have you ever been forced to watch someone that you love dearly fall victim to a terminal illness that diminishes their quality of life a bit more with each day that passes? The illness not only wreaks havoc on the person who is suffering from it, but it also destroys the life of the caregiver. As cruel as it may sound, sometimes the best option is the termination of the poor life that is withering away.

end. Every day, countless people quietly pass away after long and painful struggles with terminal

Eddie the matenience man of Ruby Pier carnival seems like just typical old man, who struggles with the idea that he never lived up to his potential. However, after he dies, he is able to see his life through a different perspective, one of eternity, and realizes how unique and important his life has been. This closely echoes the truth found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church which says that only in heaven with Christ will we find our true identity and meaning of life. 1 Death is only the beginning for Eddie and his journey through the five “heavens” of people that his life has impacted demonstrates how intricately woven together every humanity is. As pilgrims, our view of suffering and day to day actions constricts our ability to see how God truly weaves human messiness together to create a beautiful tale of redemption. So, we must live for the destination, not for the journey, leaning on hope instead of complete understanding.

Eddie at the beginning of the story was hopeful that his career would succeed.Everything started going well for him, people said he played from the heart. He was starting to show that he had money, he got a leather jacket and and wore a chain. He made 1 record that went to the charts. When he went to hollywood he met a girl immediately and moved in with her. Not only that she taught him how to play the guitar which started his music career.Eddie started to become successful however when the A&R man told him that he doesn't hear a single. His music career was basically over, he had no idea what to do, he was confused. He was lost, he had no career when his A&R man fired him, he is “a rebel without a

After Eddie found out all of the interesting things that he never knew about his father, he is now more accepting himself as a person and where he came from, as well as accepting where his father came

Lesson number one: “No life is a waste,” (Albom 50). Eddie’s first encounter was in heaven with The Blue Man. He explains to Eddie that when he was a young boy he killed him. This happened when Eddie ran in front of his car resulting in a heart attack. Eddie responds by saying “I never killed you, ok?” (Albom 60). Eddie meets many people throughout his life. Each relationship taught him a special lesson on how life goes by quick and make the best of it. “The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone”(Albom 67). This represents when you grow up you should spend your time with friends and family.

After learning his lesson about forgiveness from Ruby, Eddie implements the teachings he received to work towards forgiving his father. Throughout his childhood, Eddie encounters abuse by his father’s hand, and during his battle with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, after returning from the war, and trying to cope with his leg injury, the only thing that Eddie’s father says to him is, “get up and get a job,” (Albom 108). Many other instances of physical, emotional, and psychological abuse take place throughout Eddie’s life, thus prompting the insightful passage of, “All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair,” (Albom 104). Eddie even goes to describe his relationship with his father as occurring in three stages throughout his lifetime; neglect, violence, and silence. Upon the event of his father’s death, Eddie feels obligated to quit his schooling, work at the Pier full-time, and look after his mother, who is completely lost in her grief in the aftermath of losing her husband. Later on in the novel, Eddie explains that all he wanted to do in life was get away from the Pier, but he uses his circumstance as a reason not to,

1.Point of View: Blue man shows Eddie his point of view from the day he died

     Upon hearing this Eddie feels awful and asks why the blue man died instead of Eddie. The blue man assures him that it was okay and that everything happens for a reason. “There are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind” (Albom, 48). This was the first lesson for Eddie. That everything happens for a reason and that no life is a waste. “No life is a waste, the only time we waste is the time we spend thinking that we are alone.” (50)

Between those three, the least important was the one taught by the Blue Man. Although his lesson was very important it wasn’t the greatest of the three. All of the people who Eddie meets relate to his past in some way, even if he doesn’t know them. By talking to the Blue Man, Eddie learned that

The fourth person Eddie met in heaven was his wife, Marguerite. She had dark hair, dark eyes and was wearing a long lavender bridesmaids dress with a stitched straw hat. She was holding a basket filled with candy-covered almonds and looked to be in her 20s. Years ago at Ruby Pier Eddie met his "One true love snapshot," Marguerite. They shared a special love that was deep, quiet and irreplaceable. Marguerite always loved children but she was unable to bear them and always wanted to adopt a child. But one day while Marguerite was driving two male teenagers dropped a beer bottle on her car causing her windshield to break which created an even bigger and horrifying accident. She was then rushed to the hospital and the thought of adopting a child

However, he was still so nervous that he had almost hit Eddie. As a result, he felt dizzy and his head fell for a moment, causing his car to almost collide with another. He skids down the street and pulls into an alley and ends up hitting a truck; no one found him in the alley until he had already died. The second person Eddie meets in heaven is his former Captain.

Throughout the novel, Eddie also can be exemplified as a sympathetic character. sympathetic characters are when readers feel sympathy for throughout a story. The reader can feel empathy for Eddie, when the author describes the pain of Eddie’s gunshot wound. The pain was described to be unbearable and the description of the event of the gunshot pains a morbid picture in the reader’s mind. During Eddie’s time as a soldier in World War II, any reader can feel an astonishing amount of sympathy for Eddie. During, Eddie’s time as a soldier, he experienced, “A piercing pain ripped through Eddie's leg. He screamed a long, hard curse then crumbled to the ground. Blood was spewing below his knee. Plane engines roared. The skies lit in bluish flashes. He lay there, bleeding and burning, his eyes shut against the searing heat, and for the first time in his life, he felt ready to die,” (Albom 84). The reader can comprehend Eddies suffering and pain. Eddie was on the ground, in a war zone hurt and slowly dying. Readers can feel a lot of sympathy for when Eddie wanted to let go of the world and die. Before Eddie’s death, he ran under a falling amusement park ride to save a little girl, Eddie