Five People You Meet In Heaven

When Eddie was 18 he decided to join the army. During the war he had learned many things but he never learned how to be a prisoner. Following this statement Eddie became a prisoner for around six months. When they finally escaped they set the whole camp on fire but as they were about to leave “He stepped forward, convinced something was being burned to death in front of him” (p.83). From this moment on Eddie becomes tortured, he cannot let this image go of killing an innocent. Even as 15 years had passed from the tragic event “He wakes with a jolt, gasping for breath...It is always the same dream; Eddie wandering through the flames in the Philippines on his last night of war” (p.117). Eddie suffers from severe post traumatic system disorder or PTSD. The PTSD comes in the forms of the dreams he has every night haunting him of this innocent he is convinced he saw and was unable to save. This catastrophic memory that caused his PTSD changed Eddie’s perception and attitude about the value of his life. He came back from war changed, new, traumatized, and unstable. His life wasn’t the same from that point on and Eddie is well aware of his own change. It wasn’t until Eddie dies that he receives the closure he has wanted for all this years. The fifth person Eddie meets in heaven is a lovely little Philippine girl named Tala. It is Tala who brings him closure by telling Eddie he killed her his

The author Mitch Albom incorporates sacrifice which is a big part of being a brothers keeper in The Five People you Meet in Heaven. Eddie was in war for a short period of time, during this time The Captain becomes his keeper because he shot himself in the leg to protect Eddie, as a captain he should have done this. He teaches him that grieving is the only way out of a tough situation, similar to the one he is in. Eddie does not recognize the reasoning behind why he did what he did. The Captain explains to Eddie, "Sacrifice, you made one. I made one. We all make them. But you are angry over yours. You kept thinking about what you lost… You didn’t get it. Sacrifice is a part of life." (Albom 93). By doing this it shows his bravery, loyalty and companionship towards Eddie. He shot Eddie in the leg so Eddie would not die in the burning tent. Even though he sacrificed his life for Eddies he was

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.

Turning against the world of drugs and violence, Eddie vows to take the straight and narrow path, even if it means struggling at temporary manual labor jobs. So when he takes a landscaping job for a white man across town thinking that god had finally heard him, the man's truck is stolen from the front of Eddie's apartment causing yet another problem to add on. He hid for hours and days drinking because he really liked his job with the white man and was afraid of what might happen to him. Although getting the truck stolen from him kinda seems like a big deal, it is not because that sort of thing happens daily in the streets of fresno that he lived by, it was almost like that was something normal to him. So when his aunt gets home she reminds him yet another time that his cousin died only this time a gun came with the tortillas she would try and persuade him with the avenge the death of her son.

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

His second stop is where he meets his commanding officer of his world war II platoon. Eddie remembers being held captive along with his captain and four others. He also was the one responsible for coming up with a plan for them to escape. After they did that the captain told them to burn the place they were held captive but eddie ran back because he thought he saw a young girl, but a bullet was shot and hit him right in the knee. He learned the importance of sacrifice from the captain who then says that that it was him who shot eddie. He says that he had to sacrifice his knee in order to save his life. The captain then reveals that he died because he stepped on a landmine getting Eddie to safety, meaning he also made sacrifice.One his way out he advises Eddie to let go of his anger. The third stop is where he sees a vision of his father. He had flashbacks of the abuse he suffered from the hands of his father when he was drunk.then he meets Ruby who’s husband is the founder of Ruby Pier which was named after her. She offers him a new way to look at his father’s death. Eddie believed that his father died because he made a decision while drunk to jump into the freezing water and caught pneumonia, but really he was trying to save his friend mickey’s life. Mickey tried to kill himself after Eddie’s father caught him assaulting

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,

     The lesson that the Sargent had to teach Eddie was about sacrifice. “Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious you’re not really losing it, you’re just passing it on to someone else.” (94) In other words, the Sargent sacrificed Eddie’s leg to save his life, and he also sacrificed his life in order to preserve the lives of his

Coincidentally, the little girl who taught this lesson was at the military camp as well. She got trapped in one of the burning buildings, and that was who Eddie saw and almost died trying to save. Horribly, she burned to death and when Eddie was informed of that he felt a ton of guilt. While in Heaven, he remembered feeling a little girl’s hands as he died and when he asked Tala if he had saved the girl in time she told him that he did. When Eddie died, he was feeling Tala’s hands grabbing his, and he saved the girl who was standing under the ride by pushing her out of the way. Even though he had only briefly met this little girl before and didn’t really know her, he still saved her because all life has

After Eddie meets his fifth person, Tala, he understood that his life had meaning. Tala brings him back to the place in the war and shows him that she was stuck in the house that he set on fire. She gave him a stone and told him to wash all her scars away to show that she moved on and forgave him for killing her. She shows him that all life has a purpose no matter how long or short it is. He knows that when he died he was holding onto a little kids hands. He thought it was Amy or Annie, the little girl he saved from being killed. Instead Tala shows Eddie that it was her hands pulling him up into heaven. The whole time Eddie was in heaven and with his four other people, he did not understand that he lived until then for a reason or that his life and his death was not a waste. Eddie learns that because he stayed there his whole life and didn’t move like he wanted to, he saves a child’s life. He accepts his death and is at peace with everything that has happened to him.

Throughout his life, Eddie is racked with guilt due to the unknown shadow figure he saw in the burning building, whilst trying to escape the prisoner of war camp. When faced by Tala in heaven, he is confronted with the conformation of her death “You burn me. You make me fire.” (199). Once aware of the consequences of his actions, Eddie immediately asks Tala for her forgiveness, “I killed you, I KILLED YOU…forgive me” (201). I am able to relate to this through my own experiences of asking for forgiveness from other people. Eddie was faced with the need for forgiveness due to him causing the death of a young girl; my lesser experience of this comes through my behaviour of bullying other people throughout my primary school education. Through understanding the impacts this may have had on other people and the remorse felt due to my actions, I was able to apologise and ask for their forgiveness. Through the forgiveness of Tala and telling Eddie “You make good for me”(204), he is able to begin to also forgive himself for his behaviour, which ultimately lead to the death of the young girl. I connect to this through others’ forgiveness of me for my behaviour and therefore allowing me to move on from my mistakes and

    Eddie’s inappropriate lust for Catherine surfaces whenever she begins to act like a woman instead of his “little girl,” and this causes a strain on their relationship. In the beginning of the novel, readers and audiences can see the feelings Eddie possesses for Catherine after he arrives home from work. As they discuss Catherine’s new job in the city and how she’s

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

We learn that Eddie dies saving a little girl from a falling cart at the amusement park that he works at, and he instantly runs to push her out of the way when he realizes she is in danger. This is a very noble and selfless act made by Eddie. A quote from the novel from page 18 that pertains to this scene reads, “He dropped his cane and pushed off his bad leg and felt a shock of pain that almost knocked him down... Cart No. 2 was in a dead drop now, nothing to stop it, a boulder off a cliff...