The Five People You Meet In Heaven Analysis

After completing my readings and annotating on the novel The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom, it opened my eyes to a collection of deep and greatly inspiring lessons that explored the afterlife and one of the most open-ended topics — our purpose on earth. Inspired by Albom’s beloved uncle, Eddie Beitchman, readers follow a once-optimistic, eighty-three year old war veteran who felt as if ‘his days were dull with a routine solely based on work, his never ending regret, and loneliness’ (pg. 191) as he find his way into his uncertain afterlife. Following a tragic roller coaster accident at Ruby Pier, the amusement park where Eddie spends the majority of his childhood and adult life, along with Eddie’s bitter demise, he makes his way into heaven (pg. 43.) Rather than your typical, generic expanse of white clouds and soaring angels, Albom describes heaven as a place where your earthly life is interpreted by the five people that have significantly altered your path (pg. book

110.)’ Having almost no recollection of this woman, Eddie feels embittered to having a stranger as his third person he meet in heaven, but little does he know that there is a hidden collection of interweaving backstories that revolve around this woman and him. On page 116, as the elderly figure willingly explains her past and the many tales of joy and struggle, it brought my attention to a net of interconnected stories that lead up to the creation of “ Ruby Pier”, “Don’t you remember? Didn’t you ever wonder about the name? Where you worked? Where your father worked?” … “I,” she said, “am Ruby.” On page 121-122, as Ruby continues though her past memories, she entails the trauma of the incident on the Fourth of July that lead to the ruination of Ruby