The Five People You Meet In Heaven

THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN

What is heaven? It seems there are numberless ideas today of what "heaven" is like. The fact of the matter is that no one of us can say for certain. Some believe that heaven is where we look back at our lives here on Earth as a way of learning from our mistakes. Author Mitch Albom wrote a story entitled The Five People You Meet in Heaven that follows one man through such a journey. In the story, a man named Eddie is tragically killed in an accident. What follows is his journey to heaven where he meets five people along the way. Each of the five people are there to teach Eddie a different lesson that he must learn before he enters heaven. Each of the five people Eddie meets in heaven present ideas that serve as the themes of this novel. The five lessons that Eddie must learn are: that every person is interconnected in some way, sacrifice, forgiveness, understanding, and that he did not need to be famous to make a difference in the lives of those around him. Each of the lessons that Eddie learns are the themes of the novel that Albom would have the audience take away from the story.

Eddie spent his entire life living in the same place. Like his father before him, Eddie worked as a maintenance supervisor at the local amusement park. When Eddie died, he first found himself in the park he had know all his life. There, he was met by one of the workers Eddie had know from when he was a kid. The man he met told him a story about when Eddie was a kid. Eddie and his friend were playing catch when their ball landed in the street. When Eddie went to retrieve it, a car swerved out of the way, nearly hitting him. The man then told Eddie the same story, this time from the point of view of the driver in the car. The man driving the car became short of breath because he had nearly hit Eddie in the street. The man then crashed his car and died. The driver was the worker from the park that Eddie had known. The man told Eddie that he was there to teach him, "That 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). The theme that we are all interconnected was the first idea that Albom wanted his audience to take from the story. Too often people get caught up in themselves and what they are doing that they forget how their actions might affect others. While Eddie is learning in the story, Albom is sending this same message to his audience.

The second person Eddie meets in heaven is his old Army Captain that he served under during World War I. Eddie and the Captain found themselves in a position where they had to escape from being prisoners of war. As Eddie drove out of the camp with a couple other men, the Captain led the way on foot. Soon after there escape, the captain is killed after stepping on a land mine that was in the road. The Captain is there to teach Eddie about sacrifice. The Captain told Eddie, "I didn't die for nothing. That night, we might have all driven over that land mine. Then the four of us would have been gone." (Albom, 93) The Captain goes on to tell Eddie that, "sacrifice is a part of life...Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father." (Albom, 93) Albom wished for his audience to realize that we all make sacrifices in our lives and that we should not be angry at the sacrifices was have to make. Albom wrote much of the novel about his uncle who lived a life much like that of Eddie in the story. Albom's uncle served in World War I and spent his whole life doing the same job in the same town; often feeling like he had not accomplished what he should have. Albom wished that his uncle could have been recognized for the sacrifices he had made in his life before he died (albomfivepeople.com).

The third person Eddie meets in heaven is the woman who the amusement park he worked at is named after. It just so happened that she was staying with her husband in the hospital at the same time as Eddie's father was in the hospital. The two men shared a hospital room. Through her death, she is somehow able to see everything that went on in Eddie's home when he was a child. Over the years, Eddie disliked his father more and more for the way he treated him. Eddie was also angry at his father for dying too young and forcing Eddie to begin working at the park when he did not want to. Eddie blamed the fact that he never left that same town in 83 years of living because of his father. The woman who met Eddie ended up showing him another side of his father that he had never known before. She did this to show him that he was not all bad. The woman told Eddie she was there to teach him let go of the hatred he has for his father. The woman told Eddie that, "holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves." (Albom, 141) Albom presents this lesson to Eddie as the next theme of the novel. Albom wishes for the audience to learn from Eddie and realize that holding onto anger does nothing but hurt ourselves. Being able to forgive someone and move on is far more important than holding a grudge.

The fourth person that Eddie meets in heaven is his wife, Marguerite, who died long before Eddie. During this time, the two traveled to numerous different wedding scenes

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