Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet In Heaven

The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a very deep novel with many layers of sophistication. To get the full experience of this novel, the reader must peel away each entirely different layer to expose its inner depth. Mitch Albom, the author of this magnificent novel, has a way with words and ensures that you think long and hard about each page in The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Albom has written “It’s the thinking that gets you killed.”(LX.ii.v) for me, this quote hit me the hardest out of anything in his novel. I could relate this to my life and others’ before me. To me, when Mickey had said this, it had spiked my interest to a new level and really made me contemplate life. If you were to think about it, life is entirely run by thinking.

In the first chapter, an amusement park ride at Ruby Pier named Freddy’s Free Fall begins its descend to the ground, and “He half flew, half stumbled toward her...He felt two hands in his own, two small hands”(XVIII.vi.v.). Assuming that Eddie had not thought about this selfless act before he had jumped to save the little girl, he allowed more time for him to push the girl out of the way. Suppose Eddie would have thought about his actions first, he might not have had adequate time to save the girl. Thus forth, if he had survived he would have died mentally because he could not save her, and if he did not save her but rather push her further in along with himself, he also would have died. The Five People You Meet in Heaven is centered around this quote. As explained earlier in the novel, The Blue Man had saved Eddie’s life by thinking about how young and full of potential he was while he was middle aged and did not have much of a life outside of Ruby Pier (XLII). By thinking this through, he had stopped in time to save Eddie, but by saving Eddie, he had died since “It’s the thinking that gets you killed.”(LX.ii.v). I believe that everyone has their quote they live by in life and for me, “It’s the thinking that gets you killed.”(LX.ii.v) is mine. It has had much effect on the story and how it has unfolded through the novel, silently connecting each