The Five People You Meet in Heaven

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

First edition cover to the novel
Author	Mitch Albom
Cover artist	Claudia Evans
Language	English
Genre	Novel
Publisher	Little, Brown & Time Warner Paperbacks
Publication date	25 September 2003
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	228 pp (first edition, hardback) & 240 pp (paperback edition)
ISBN	ISBN 0-316-72661-3 (first edition, hardback) & ISBN 0-7515-3682-2 (paperback edition)

The Five People You Meet in Heaven... is a novel by the author of Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom. It recounts the life and death of a simple yet dignified old man, Eddie. After dying in a freak accident, Eddie finds himself in heaven where he encounters five people who have significantly affected his life, whether he realized at the time or not. Mitch Albom dedicates the book to his uncle Edward Beitchman. He says that he wants people like his uncle who felt unimportant here on earth to realize, finally, how much they mattered and how they were loved.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven was published in 2004 by Hyperion, and remained on the New York Times Best Seller list for 95 weeks.

Plot Summary

The story sucks. He is the Head of Maintenance at Ruby Pier, an amusement park along the seaside. Eddie is described as gruff and coarse in appearance, though somewhat warm toward the children who populate the pier. The story begins with Eddie's last day on Earth-his eighty-third birthday. As he goes about his everyday routine, a sudden scream near a tower drop ride alerts him to danger-one of the cars has come loose, suspended hundreds of feet in the air. As other workers rush to free the passengers of the ride, Eddie realizes that the cable that supports the car must have somehow come unraveled; he is right in this assumption, as weeks earlier, a young man accidentally lost his car keys in the ride, causing the cable to be husked like an ear of corn.

Eddie tries to warn his maintenance assistants not to release the brakes of the ride, but they ignore his shouts. When the brakes are freed, the car comes hurtling toward the boardwalk. Eddie notices a little girl frozen in fear beneath the car; he dives to save her, but feels only two small hands in his own before he is killed by the vehicle.

Eddie finds himself transported to Heaven, which strangely looks like the Ruby Pier of his childhood. While there, he encounters a strange face: The Blue Man, or Joseph Corvelzchik, a "freak" in Ruby Pier's old freak show. The Blue Man explains that Heaven is not the Eden-like atmosphere often imagined; rather, it is a personal journey. Five different individuals are "appointed" to each new person in Heaven, and all visit them to learn one lesson and, in turn, discover their meaning and purpose in life. The Blue Man begins by telling his own story. He attained his “freak” status by using silver nitrate as treatment for his nerves and incontinence as a child, resulting in argyria. At first, he was shunned by all-until he was discovered by a traveling circus. He found happiness in being the "best freak" in the shows, and reveals that Ruby Pier is his own, personalized Heaven.

Eddie is intrigued by the Blue Man's tale, but wonders how the two are connected; he vaguely remembers seeing him as a child, growing up along Ruby Pier. The Blue Man explains that Eddie and his friends inadvertenly killed him while playing with a baseball in the street-the Blue Man swerved to avoid hitting the children, which resulted in a heart attack. Eddie apologizes profusely and prepares to "pay" for his "sin"-but the Blue Man laughs and explains that he has no need for regret. He then teaches Eddie his lesson-all people are connected in some way, be it a close friendship or a simple bond. With this lesson passed on, the Blue Man moves on, his skin becoming "perfect" as Eddie is transported to his next stage of Heaven.

Eddie is transported to a war-torn battlefield, full of explosions and bones. He discovers a set of dog tags that bear his name, and painfully recalls his own war days, in the Philippines during World War II. A voice suddenly calls out to him-it is the Captain, Eddie's commanding officer and Second Person. The two talk, and Eddie remembers their horrid experiences. He and his men were captured by Japanese soldiers and held prisoner for some time; eventually, the group escaped and, in an act of retaliation, destroys the village that their enemies had built.

While burning the various huts to the ground, Eddie spotted a shadow in one of the buildings. He began to scream for whoever was inside the hut to emerge, nearly losing his mind after months of starvation and isolation. He pushed away his fellow soldiers as he prepared to enter the flaming hut. A sudden blast of pain in his leg stopped him from entering-this bullet wound warped Eddie's leg completely. The resulting depression and post-traumatic stress that this wound caused halted his life for a good deal of time, and he reveals that he never truly recovered spiritually or emotionally from the war.

The Captain reveals the truth of that night-it was he that shot Eddie to save his life. An enraged Eddie attacks the Captain viciously-until the officer reveals that while Eddie laid in the back of a convoy, unconscious, he stepped forward to look for more soldiers. The Captain accidentally stepped on a land mine, which killed him instantly. Eddie apologzies for his selfishness, but the Captain turns this into his lesson-sacrifice. He explains that all people make sacrifices and choices, and it is only the most painful of these choices that allows others to live. Eddie forgives the Captain, who reveals that his Heaven truly resembles an untouched Paradise before he, too, moves on.

Eddie is then taken to an isolated diner amidst snow-covered purple mountains. He notices that many of the restaurant's patrons have been injured-and that the man sitting in a corner booth is his father. He begins to scream out "Dad!", but a voice stops him. It is the voice of an elderly woman, who introduces herself by explaining her life. She was a waitress in a diner similar to the one before the pair, and reveals that she married a wealthy man named Emile who, in an act of love, built an amusement park for her to capture her youth forever. She is Ruby, the namesake of Ruby Pier. She has come to regret the park's existence, though, as it caught fire one night, burning almost everything to the ground. Emile's fortune was gone, and Ruby nursed him back to health, all the while wishing that her park had never been built.

As Ruby tells her tale, Eddie remembers his agonizing relationship with his father. The man was often drunk, and often hit Eddie and his brother Joe after a bad night. Eddie's father also never told his son that he loved or cared for him-the only praise Eddie ever received was when he fixed something broken on Ruby Pier. After the war, Eddie's father confused his son's depression and stress with weakness, and tried to abuse him again; Eddie resisted, and the two stopped speaking.

Ruby forces Eddie to confront the night that his father died. Mickey Shea, a maintenance worker at the pier and alcoholic, had come to Eddie's home, drunk. While there, he tried to rape Eddie's mother. When Eddie's father arrived, Mickey ran into the rain-soaked night, eventually stumbling into the waters surrounding the pier. Though furious, Eddie's father dives into the ocean and saves Mickey; the resulting pnuemonia killed him. Ruby explains that she knows this because Emile shared a hospital room with his father.

Ruby finally imparts her lesson on Eddie-that anger is a terrible feeling that results in nothing but pain for all parties. She explains that her diner in Heaven is a reminder of a simpler time, and a haven for all those injured at Ruby Pier (amusement park). She also urges Eddie to forgive his father, explaining that he cannot move on until he does so. Eddie confronts the old man, and breaks down emotionally as he utters two words: "It's fixed." Ruby nods to Eddie as she disappears into night.

After leaving Ruby, Eddie moves through various wedding receptions in his next stage of heaven. At one of the weddings, he encounters a woman handing out chocolates “for the bitter and the sweet.” It is his wife, Marguerite. Eddie loved her from the moment they met, before the war broke out, and never cared for anyone as much as his wife. The two planned to adopt a child, as Marguerite was unable to bear them herself...

It is never easy to deal with the loss of a loved one, and nearly impossible to cope with the premature death of a spouse. Although life is finite, love is eternal. Marguerite explains to Eddie that even after a loved one dies, the feeling of love lives on. In the absence of a physical connection, another emotion grows stronger than before: memory. As they dance together at their own wedding they share a final embrace, until Marguerite disappears and Eddie is once again left alone.

In Eddie’s final stage in heaven he finds himself in a sea of white, empty and silent. He hears the sounds of screaming children – the same sounds that have haunted his dreams ever since the day he escaped captivity in the Philippines. Upon investigating the source of these screams, he finds children playing peacefully in a river. They are screams of joy, not of horror. Amongst the children, he finds a young Filipino girl, Tala. It turns out that she was the shadow he saw in the burning hut. He was responsible for her death.

After hysterically screaming and sobbing, Eddie collapses before the little girl, who shares with him his final lesson. Eddie explains to her that he was sad because he feels as if he didn’t do anything meaningful with his life. To this, she responds by sharing with him his purpose on earth. “Children. You keep them safe. You make good for me. Is where you were supposed to be. Eddie Main-ten-ance.” (p. 191).

Before Eddie exits his final stage in heaven, Tala tells him that he did, in fact, successfully push the young girl to safety from the plummeting ride. Eddie is confused at first, telling Tala that he felt his arms pulling her, not pushing. It turns out that these arms belonged to Tala, who was pulling him into heaven, keeping him safe.

Eddie is then swept away and is brought back to the pier. He sees thousands of people, some dead, some yet to be born. They are all people whose lives Eddie had unknowingly saved by maintaining the park rides. Finally, he comes to a beautiful, young, Marguerite sitting on a Ferris wheel. He looks at the clouds forming into one word: Home.

The Pier returns as it did before, after Eddie’s death. Dominguez carries on with Eddie's old maintenance job. Albom reiterates the idea that all lives are connected by revealing that the owner of the key responsible for the ride malfunction and in turn Eddie’s death is the great-grandson of Ruby. The girl Eddie saved, “Amy or Annie,” many years from now will see in her first stage in heaven “a whiskered old man, with a linen cap and a crooked nose, who waited in a place called the Stardust Band Shell to share his part of the secret of heaven: that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and this world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.” (p. 196)

Characters

Eddie

Since his days as a child, Ruby Pier was part of Eddie’s life. He played there every day as a child with his older brother and friends, and began working there as a teenager under the supervision of his father, who held Eddie’s position before his untimely death. After he returned from his stint in World War II he resumed his life at the pier, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Eddie underwent years of abuse from his father. It started with neglect, took a turn towards violence, and concluded with absolute silence. His father would beat him as a child in his drunken state, culminating one night shortly after Eddie returned from war. As his father took a swing at Eddie, drunk, Eddie resisted by grabbing his father’s fist, for which his father never spoke to him again. Eddie’s relationship with his parents became distant after that, living alone with his wife, Marguerite. A few years later, his father died of pneumonia. His mother did not react well, or even sanely. She seemed unable to cope with her husband’s death and entered a stage of denial, which necessitated Eddie’s permanent return to the apartment in which he grew up. From here he returned to working at the pier doing exactly what he was doing before he went off to war.

He lived the next few decades alone with Marguerite. They lived simply, their “deep but quiet” love (p. 156) getting them through the drudgeries of their everyday life. Unfortunately, Marguerite could not bear children, prompting them to routinely discuss the prospect of adoption. Eddie’s standard response was “we’re too old.” Marguerite’s rebuttal was “what’s too old to a child?”

They enjoyed their marriage together without a hitch until Eddie’s 39th birthday, when they fought over the phone as Eddie called Marguerite from the track to tell her of his winnings. To reconcile, Marguerite decided to drive to the track and apologize. But, along the way, she was involved in a gruesome car crash that landed her in the hospital for several months. After she was released, doctors found that she had a brain tumor. Marguerite died a few years later.

Eddie lived the rest of his life in remote solitude, keeping his job at Ruby Pier to keep him busy. He hobbled around the pier on his titanium-filled knee, a constant reminder of his time spent fighting in World War II. It is here that he meets his ultimate end, and the reader follows him throughout his exploration of the afterlife.

The Blue Man

As a young boy, Eddie spent many summer days playing with his friends and older brother at Ruby Pier. While playing catch with his friends one afternoon, the baseball Eddie received for his most recent birthday is inadvertently thrown into the street. As Eddie scampers to retrieve it, he steps in front of a car. The driver, in a panic, swerves and narrowly avoids collision with one car then veers into an alley and crashes into the back of another car resulting in his death. Eddie escapes without a scratch.

In Eddie’s first stop in heaven, it is revealed that this was “The Blue Man,” or Joseph Corvelzchik. Joseph lived his life as an attraction in a freak show at Ruby Pier. He emigrated from Poland in 1894, and, like most immigrants of the time, struggled to get by financially. At the age of 10 he took a job working in a sweatshop sewing buttons onto coats. His father always told him to avoid eye contact with the foreman and to remain unnoticed. But, one day, he spills a pile of buttons all over the floor right in front of the foreman, who tells him that he is useless and must go. As his father pleads with the foreman to let him stay, Joseph soils himself in front of the foreman, his father, and the entire industry.

His father never forgave him. As the years passed, his nervousness and incontinence persisted, further humiliating him and disappointing his father. In an act of desperation, Joseph resorted to a primitive medicinal measure – drinking silver nitrate. As this, later considered to be poison, did not cure him of his ailments, he assumed he was not taking a high enough dosage. As he continued to ingest more and more silver nitrate, his skin began to change colors (which he remedied by taking more silver nitrate), until eventually he was completely blue. He was left jobless after being fired from the sweatshop for scaring other workers. Eventually he found refuge with a group of carnival men, and his life as a “commodity” had begun. After traveling from carnival to carnival, he found permanent employment at Ruby Pier, where he was referred to as the best freak in the entire show. He lived above a sausage shop, playing cards at night with fellow circus performers and even occasionally Eddie’s father, earning his living by sitting in a cage all day, half dressed, as people walked by and stared in shock, awe, and sometimes, disgust.

He explains that when Eddie retrieved his ball from the street, although he was quite safe and sound, the Blue man wasn't. Eddie had given him a heart attack when he was driving due to a sudden halt and the Blue man was not mad at Eddie because of this, which confused Eddie. The Blue Man then taught Eddie his first lesson, that we are all somehow or another connected. Everything that we do affects what will happen to another. The Blue Man then tells him "Strangers are family you have yet to come to know", meaning that although they never met, what Eddie did affected his life from then on.

The Blue Man taught Eddie the following lesson.

"There are no random acts , we are all connected"

The Captain

Eddie was shipped off to the Philippines during World War II, “The Captain” was Eddie’s commanding officer. He was a few years older than Eddie and his fellow men and had spent his life in the military, as did three generations of his family before him. His stern demeanor and quick temper were his most noticeable attributes. He made a promise to his men: no man gets left behind.

The Captain is the second person Eddie meets in heaven. Here, it is revealed that he was the one who shot Eddie in the leg, crippling him for life. However, unbeknownst to Eddie, the captain was actually saving his life, as Eddie was about to run into a burning hut thinking he saw the shape of a small child burning in the ruins. Shortly after saving Eddie, the captain steps on a land mine and is killed. His lesson was about sacrifices.

The captain has taught Eddie the following lesson .

"Sacrifice is the noblest thing you can do "

Ruby

As a young girl, Ruby worked at the Seaside Diner, a small diner neighboring what would become Ruby Pier that Eddie used to frequent before it was torn down years ago. She was a beauty back in those days, and as such turned down many men until a young businessman, Emile, sat down in her diner. Ruby did not have much money growing up, and as such was blown away by Emile’s monetary whimsicality. After sufficient courtship, Emile proposed to Ruby and she gleefully accepted. To capture her eternal youth and the everlasting happiness their marriage would undergo, Emile built an amusement park in her name: Ruby Pier.

Ruby, the third person he meets, goes on to tell Eddie about the near-complete destruction of Ruby Pier. For Independence Day, Emile hired extra workers and utilized fireworks to draw extra customers. However, some of the “roustabouts” were drinking one night and began setting off fireworks, causing a fire that almost burned the entire pier to the ground. In a frantic attempt to save his life’s work, Emile tried to extinguish the fire with buckets of water, and in the process was critically injured and ended up in the same hospital room with Eddie’s father. Because of this, she is able to recount to him his father’s final living moments to him. Ruby helps Eddie understand the importance of forgiveness.

Marguerite

Eddie met his wife, Marguerite, right before his 17th birthday. Having met her only once, he ran home to his older brother and proclaimed that one day she would be his wife. Although premature, this prediction turned out to be accurate. They wed on the Christmas Eve following his return from the war, on the second floor of Sammy’s, a small Chinese restaurant. It was a simple wedding. Eddie used what little money he had from the army on their food (roasted chicken with Chinese vegetables) and entertainment (a man with an accordion).

They had a happy, loving marriage even though they could not have children. They were planning to adopt a child until the events of Eddie's 39th birthday. That day he won $800 at the track and called Marguerite to tell her the good news. However, she did not respond positively. Out of spite Eddie put all his winnings on the next race. Marguerite attempted to drive to the track to apologize for yelling at him on his birthday and to convince him to stop betting. On her way there, a couple of drunken kids dropped whiskey bottles off the freeway and landed on her car. This caused her to get in a car crash that lacerated her liver and broke her arm. The cost of the medical bills and her health issues made them ineligible to adopt.

It is difficult to reconcile with a loved one after such a tragic event, and so Eddie and Marguerite's marriage changed. They often sat in silence that was permeated by sullen tension. As time passed, however, they were eventually able to overcome their emotional disconnect and become loving companions once again. A few years later Marguerite died of a brain tumor. She is the fourth person Eddie meets.

Marguerite teaches Eddie that, even though she had died, their love was never gone. It just took a different shape. Until Marguerite teaches him this, Eddie had felt as though she had been taken from him too early and that their love was torn to pieces.

Tala

During the war, Eddie was held captive in the Philippines by a troop of Japanese soldiers. After he and his fellow captives were able to escape, he set fire to their barracks. As he watched a straw hut burn to the ground, he thought he saw the shape of a small child inside and thought he heard screaming. Unsure if what he saw was real or a hallucination, he tried to run into the burning hut to save the child but was stopped, shot in the leg by his captain, thus saving Eddie's life.

Eddie later finds out in the book that he was, in fact, not hallucinating. He finds out that the child's name was Tala and she explains to him that the hands he felt on his own were not Annie's but hers, guiding him to heaven. Tala had forgiven Eddie, but she tells him to "wash" her of the burns. When he rubbed a wet rock up and down on her burns, they disappeared. Tala then tells Eddie that he kept children safe from harm.

Minor Characters

Eddie’s Father

As a child, Eddie had a very troubled relationship with his father. Like most children, he had a deep devotion to his father, despite his abuse . Even when he was young, Eddie’s father rarely paid attention to him, and as he grew older, his mother handed out the love while his father became the disciplinarian. When they visited the pier together, his father would often dump him into the custody of a stranger, with whom Eddie would spend the entire day until his father returned, often wasted. His father would beat him and his brother regularly—another result of his alcoholism. However, despite his years of abuse, Eddie still adored his father. This adoration made him strive to please his father, at first through his work with him at Ruby Pier. Initially, the only task Eddie was allowed to perform was crawling under the Ferris wheel to gather loose change. Later, he was given more responsibility, such as operating the brakes on some of the rides. Eventually, his father trusted him to repair broken mechanical parts, the completion of which earned his father’s approval. Eddie would come home tired, grease wedged under his fingernails, starkly contrasting his brother, who would come home tanned and smelling of the sea from his job as a lifeguard. For this, he gained favor over his older brother, but his father did not express it any more emphatically than a silent nod—the initial stages of a father-son relationship based on unspoken understanding and denial of affection.

Shortly after Eddie returned from war, any semblance of a relationship he had with his father ceased. Recovering from his war injury, he slipped into depression, something his father could not understand. Coming home drunk one night and finding Eddie asleep on the couch, his father began berating him to get a job. In his drunken state, he quickly became angry, and eventually violent. As he tried to punch Eddie, Eddie grabbed his fist in defense. His father never spoke to him again, citing the fact that “that boy raised a hand to me.”

Years later and unbeknownst to Eddie until he arrives in heaven, Mickey Shea, one of his father’s oldest and closest friends, attempted to rape Eddie’s mother. Eddie’s father chased Mickey out of the house and onto the pier, where Mickey fell into the water and began to drown. Eddie’s father dragged the man he initially set out to kill safely to shore. From this he caught pneumonia and died shortly thereafter. His dying breaths were spent hanging halfway out his hospital window screaming for Eddie’s mother, brother, and Eddie himself.

Eddie’s Mother

Eddie’s mother does not play a prominent role in the story. The only role she really plays is when Eddie talks to Ruby. Later on in the story, Eddie's father saves Mickey's life showing forgiveness -what Ruby teaches Eddie. She was very affectionate towards Eddie and his brother, Joe, as they were growing up—a contrast to her husband’s “tough love.” After her husband’s death, she slipped into denial, and died shortly after.

Joe

Eddie took a different path in life than his older brother, Joe. The discrepancies between Joe and Eddie became clear early on, specifically one afternoon when Joe was jumped in an alley by “hoodlums,” as their mother called them. Eddie grabbed a trash can lid and used it as a weapon to fend off his brother’s attackers. For having to be saved by his younger brother, Joe was forever ashamed, as his father praised Eddie for being the tough one.

This trend continued into their teenage years, when Joe worked as a lifeguard while his brother and father performed grueling manual labor all day. This reinforced his father’s notion that he was not “tough.” Eventually, he got a job in hardware sales, where Eddie noted he made three times his maintenance salary. Joe dies years before his brother, leaving Eddie alone in life.

Inspiration

The main character, Eddie, was actually based on Mitch Albom’s uncle Eddie. Both the fictional and real versions of Eddie were war veterans who died at 83 and lived simple lives, both feeling that they had not accomplished everything in life they should have. As a child, Albom listened to one of his uncle’s stories during Thanksgiving dinner. Eddie told him of a night when he went to the hospital with a raging fever. He awoke in the middle of the night, and sitting at the foot of his bed were dead relatives. Upon being asked by exuberant children what he did, Eddie replied: “I told them to get lost. I wasn’t ready for them yet.” After this, Albom began to think about the concept of heaven. Perhaps it was not a utopian paradise, but more of a place where you can gain insight into your life after you have died through people you have loved, encountered, or even never met, in your life.

Film adaptations

A TV movie of the same name was made in 2004, starring Jon Voight as Eddie. Directed by Lloyd Kramer, the film was nominated for a Primetime Emmy amongst several awards. Other actors included Dagmara Dominczyk (Marguerite), Jeff Daniels (Blue Man), Ellen Burstyn (Ruby), Michael Imperioli (Captain), Steven Grayhm (young Eddie) and Callum Keith Rennie (Eddie's father).

Quotations

• "All the people you meet here have one thing to teach you." Eddie was skeptical. His fists stayed clenched. "What?" he said. "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."
• "Fairness doesn't govern life and death. For if it did, no good man would ever die young."
• "It is because the spirit knows deep down that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else. And in that small distance, lives are changed."
• "One withers, another grows."
• "Each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one."
• "Strangers," the Blue Man said,"are just family you have yet to come to know."
• "No life is a waste," the Blue Man said. "The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone."
• "All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped."
• "That's what heaven is. You get to make sense of your yesterdays."

Ruby Pier

The fictional amusement park "Ruby Pier" where Eddie works doesn't really seem to draw many parallels to the real life amusement park "Luna Park" located in Coney Island, although it also has many similarities, but also to Pacific Park as well. However it should be noted that the book's setting is not in California, since that state is mentioned by name at some point, implying that they are not in California. These parallels include...

• Both parks are named after people close to the original owner
  • Luna Park for owner's sister Luna
  • Ruby Pier for owner's wife Ruby (one of the people Eddie meets in heaven)
• Both parks had fires that lead to the loss of the original ownership
  • Ruby Pier fire leads to the selling of the park
  • Because of the expensive costs, Luna Park is let go by the original owner(s) (not sold away)
• Both parks had/have very grand entrances
  • seem to be described (by the book and in pictures of Luna Park) as very similar entrances by the large scale and grand arches/domes

External links

• The Five People You Meet in Heaven at IMDb
• The Five People You Meet in Heaven at the Internet Book List
• Official Book Webpage