Mitch Albom : The 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

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

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.

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.

The book The Five People You Meet In Heaven is about a kid named Eddie that strives to keep Ruby Pier a safe place to ride and who is also a crippled veteran. People used to call him Eddie maintenance because he had a tag that said maintenance. Eddie dies at the age of eighty-three. Eddie had an assistant who was named Dominguez who also help keep the rides safe. One day at Ruby Pier the ride Freddy’s Free Fall malfunctioned because a passenger lost their keys on ride which made the tilt over and hang off the track. Then when Eddie seen that the cart was hanging off the edge he tried to tell the people who work at the ride how to fix the ride but it was too late then the cart fell. Standing directly under the cart was a little girl and when

     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)

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

The notion of sacrifice is demonstrated throughout the novel. To start off, while fighting in the war, Eddie, was under the command of a selfless military captain. Each time the troops would leave enemy territory, the captain, would himself physically step outside the vehicle to ensure the area was clear prior to advancing. In the process of scouting one such area, he accidentally stepped on a land mine and blew up. While in heaven the captain says to Eddie, “I didn 't die for nothing, either. That night we might have all driven over that land mine. Then the four of us would have been gone” (Albom 93). In this way, sacrifice can be seen through the captain’s will to save his troops. The characters of Mickey Shea and Eddie 's father are portrayed throughout the novel as nearly brother like. After being fired from his job, Mickey

God tells him that he needs to pick his personal heaven as well as what age he wants to be, so Eddie chooses to be 33 years old again and back at his and Marguerite’s apartment as if to redo all the mistakes he’s made during that time. Next, God tells him the rules saying that he can’t change his heaven but he can change his age, he can leave to visit others but he can’t stay their long, and when he has to teach and share his story with someone he is not allowed to tell them how/when the died or who their next person is. Also, God tells him that he still isn’t done growing, their are still people he can learn from and people he can teach, so he has Eddie explore other people’s heaven. Adding this onto the story will help show that the even after death you can still influence people while the people you’ve influenced in the past go off a influence someone else. Furthermore, that is one way to enhance the ending as well as the

“The Five People You Meet In Heaven” by Mitch Albom is a heartfelt story of a war veteran named Eddie who works at the Ruby Pier. On his 83rd birthday, Eddie is killed trying to save a little girl from the falling cart of a ride that malfunctioned. When Eddie goes to heaven, he meets five people that tell him different things about his life and teach him lessons. Within the book, there are many important symbols. The Ferris wheel and the ocean are two of these symbols that help contribute to a deeper meaning of the story.

The Five People You Meet In Heaven, by Mitch Albom is an explanation of life, starting with death. In this story, Albom starts when life ends, and this has plenty of symbolism once analysed further. In many ways, Death can teach the greatest lesson: Life. Death teaches us our purpose on Earth, it signifies the effect that our lives had on people around us, but more importantly, Death leaves behind a hole that cannot be filled. In Five People, Albom conveys this wonderfully, combining a myriad of different lessons that showed Eddie his purpose on Earth. Many times, his life was changed by somebody else, and at the same time, he changed many lives. Each lesson that is described signifies an important part of his life, and they all come together into the vast melting pot of life, like a jigsaw puzzle to explain Eddie’s life. These lessons are effective mainly through their rhetoric, but also through the message behind them. Eddie learnt his final lessons in life’s greatest classroom: Heaven.

While in heaven, Eddie first learns how his time in the military impacted the lives of his unit and his captain. He had immensely affected whether they had lived or died during their time as prisoners of war. Due to his quick thinking, Eddie was able to construct a diversion that gave him and his men an escape route. Eddie used his juggling skills to distract the guards resulting in their flee. Without Eddie’s assistance the men would most likely not have escaped. Unfortunately, their jailbreak also led up to the captain’s death. When the men were rushing out of the burning camp, Eddie believed he saw a person in the fire. He made several attempts to save whoever was still in the flames. This gave the captain no choice but to shoot his leg and then rush him to a nearby medical

In The Five People You Meet in Heaven a novel by Mitch Albom Eddie changes his perspective drastically from the beginning of the story to the end. In the beginning, Eddie didn’t understand a lot of what happened in his life. He didn’t know if he saved Annie or Amy from the rollercoaster. He doesn’t know his father's last words, or if he really saw someone in the barn that he burnt down.

The second person Eddie meets in heaven resonated with me, the Captain. The Captain was Eddie’s captain in the army. The Captain showed compassion, pride in his position, and took his vocation serious. He grew up in a military family, and military was all he knew. The captain being a lifetime military man promised his soldiers he would “leave no one behind” (Albom, 2003, p. 64). This promise alone brought comfort to the soldiers he led. He led his soldiers with ease, his soldiers looked to him to keep them alive. The captain was willing to do whatever it took to keep his men safe, even shoot them in the leg if he needed to. In the end, the captain gave his own life for his soldiers, if that isn’t a calling, I don’t know what is. The Captain

The first person Eddie met in heaven was the Blue Man. Eddie had only seen this guy a couple times in his life. One lesson the Blue Man taught Eddie was that one life affects another and that everyone is connected. On page 36 of The Five People You Meet in Heaven the Blue Man told Eddie that he was the one that killed him. Eddie said no I didn’t