Symbolism In 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

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

Significance: In this scene, Tita is eating candles so that she can enter the bright tunnel to be with Pedro. The author uses magical elements such as the brilliant tunnel to describe how Tita and Pedro have died because of their intense emotions for each

She lets Eddie know even though he gambled all their money away she still loved him. Eddie resentful at himself for his wife’s early death, realizes that love lives forever. She tells him “Life has to end. Love doesn’t” (Albom 173). Finally Eddie reunites in heaven with Tala the young girl killed in the war. She explains to Eddie that she was the shadow he saw that was burned in the fire. “The nipa. Ina say be safe there. Wait for her. Be safe. The big noise. Big fire. You burn me” (Albom 187). She explains to Eddie he was meant to work at the Pier, to protect the

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

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 next person that Eddie meets is his Sargent from the war. He tells Eddie about how he, the Sargent, died, and how that enabled the rest of the company to survive. He told Eddie that it had been him who had shot him, in order to save his life. Eddie had become convinced that he saw someone in a burning building, and to prevent Eddie from going in there and losing his life, the Sargent shot him in the leg.

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.

This side of the story is about a man who has fragile health and can’t afford for kids to run across the street to get a ball. “A man is behind the wheel of a Ford Model A, which he has borrowed from his friend to practice driving.” “Suddenly a ball bounces across the street, and a boy come running after it.” “The car skids, the tires screech.” “The man feels dizzy and his head drops, the automobile collides with another.” “The blood from his coronary arteries no longer flow to his heart.” ( pg. 25 5 people you meet in heaven). This relates to the quote because the more you read the quote the meaning changes. Each person is linked to another in some way shape or form. This is just some of what the quote has to talk

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