Analysis of "five People You Meet in Heaven"

An Analysis of The Five People You Meet In Heaven

“Everyone has an idea of heaven”- Mitch Albom. This is one of the most truthful and realistic statements about human kind of all time. Without even thinking about it, all of us, have, in some point of our lives, created a picture of heaven. For example, in all the religions of the world, there are, at least, some vague inferences about afterlife and the rewards or punishments they offer. And, it would be safe to assume that even the people who don’t believe in the existence of hell or heaven, has pondered, at least once, that if they existed what they would actually be like. One of the results of these ponderings is the fiction, The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. The novel is based on Mitch Albom’s idea of heaven, and it follows the story of Eddie, a maintenance man of an amusement park. In the novel, Eddie dies trying to protect a little girl from a defective ride. Later, Eddie wakes up in the old version of the amusement park, Ruby Pier, and gets to know from someone that he is in heaven. And, according to the regulations of heaven, he has to meet five people in their own models of the promised land, in order to get understanding of his life on earth and to achieve his own paradise.

The very first person that Eddie meets in heaven is the Blue Man, who worked as a freak in the sideshow house of the amusement park where Eddie grew up. This person is really important for Eddie, as he is the one, who explains the procedures of heaven to him. Later on, Eddie also learns that he was indirectly responsible for the man’s death. This person starts out by telling Eddie his own life story: the story of how his co-workers and boss humiliated him, how his father was disgusted by him, how his skin turned blue due to taking too much silver nitrate as an anxiety medication, how he took the job of a freak just to survive, and lastly, how as a little boy, Eddie had run in front of his car, which had eventually given him a heart attack, and killed him. He, also, tells Eddie why he chose the old version of Ruby Pier as his heaven. “ ‘This became my home.. I could walk along this beach without scaring people. It may not sound like much, but for me, it was a freedom I [ the Blue Man] had rarely known’ ” (42). The lesson that Eddie learns from the Blue Man is the fact that all the people and events in the world, are somehow connected to each other. Even though, the Blue Man and Eddie barely knew each other on earth, they had impacted each other’s lives in a tremendous way. Also, he tells Eddie that he shouldn’t feel guilty as he was only a kid when the accident happened, and birth and death are parts of the whole system. “ ‘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’ ” ( 48).

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