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The theme of death in literature
The theme of death in literature
The theme of death in literature
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There are many characters in the novel, The Five People You Meet In Heaven, either major or minor. Each minor character has a significance just as important as the major characters. Minor characters in the novel include, Amy or Annie, Nikki, and Eddie’s friends at war. Initially, Amy or Annie is a minor character, who has a grave significance throughout the story. Amy or Annie is the little girl that Eddie saved from the falling carts when he died. Without Amy or Annie standing in that spot, at that specific moment, Eddie would not have died. He still would have been alive. Eddie wanted to save the little girl with all of his heart, and he even asked each of his five people whether or not he saved her from the falling carts, after they taught him their lessons. Amy or Annie has an even greater …show more content…
The men he went to war with, including Morton, Willingham, Rabazzo, and Smitty. The men resemble the hardships that Eddie had to face after he went to war, including the severe depression and his injured leg. They are also the ones that saved his life when he went to go back into the burning building to save the little child that he thought he saw, however they are also the ones that destroyed it when they shot him in the leg. They show the significance of friendship, loyalty and overcoming obstacles, but also they portray leaving behind the dread of the past, and forgetting. As it states on page 65, “‘You know, I’ve been wondering,’ the Captain said, rubbing his chin. ‘The men from our unit-did they stay in touch? Willingham? Morton? Smitty? Did you ever see those guys again?’ Eddie remembered the names. The truth was, they had not kept in touch. War could bond men like a magnet, but like a magnet it could repel them, too. The things they saw, the things they did. Sometimes they just wanted to
There are a few minor characters in the story. There’s Clarisse and there are the firemen. The firemen are only mentioned to give you a better perspective of their world. They are very obedient and don’t seem to have minds of their own. Their personalities are not shown and they don’t really play a significant role in the novel. Clarisse, however, is a big player. She is the reason that Montag decides to quit and print books instead. She is used to get things going and ignite the rebellion, but she is soon killed off. So, she doesn’t have a big enough role to be considered a major character. Most of the minor character4s are there to show contrast with some major characters. This way, you have a better insight as to who they really are.
Eddie Costello’s current view of the war is as a "sore asshole", but he says he started out as a "seventeen year old adolescent patriot". Eddies experience is similar to Johns in that he initially went to great lengths to participate in the war, lying about his age to get a munitions factory job at only 14.
All three men: Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon, & Kiowa were friends of someone in their platoon. After their unfortunate deaths they were missed and remembered. Respect was given where it was due. War is a hard enough battle to fight and seeing men and woman die around you is terrible. You'll make friends to get through easier. Unfortunately those friends or you may die and whoever is left living has a much worse battle to fight now. This novel portrayed this idea pretty well, that's why I decided to use it. I wrote this because veterans commonly lose friends in war and have to deal with those burdens the rest of their lives. Some people might not realize these men and woman become close and bond, which makes one another's death hurt more. Like I said, the novel portrays this very
Ultimately, they were trying to survive. They were trying to make it back home when they knew they would never be the same man as before. They were scared, but walked around and carried the war on a courageous front. Often, these men carried each other with unconscious support. They were brothers in arms.
...though people believe that, those on the home front have it just as a bad as the soldiers, because they have to deal with the responsibilities of their husbands, there is nothing that can compare to what these men have gone through. The war itself consumed them of their ideology of a happy life, and while some might have entered the war with the hope that they would soon return home, most men came to grips with the fact that they might never make it out alive. The biggest tragedy that follows the war is not the number of deaths and the damages done, it is the broken mindset derives from being at war. These men are all prime examples of the hardships of being out at war and the consequences, ideologies, and lifestyles that develop from it.
Each soldiers experience in the war was devastating in its own way. The men would go home carrying the pictures and memories of their dead companions, as well as the enemy soldiers they killed. “They all carried emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing- these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.” These were the things that weighed the most, the burdens that the men wanted to put down the most, but were the things that they would forever carry, they would never find relief from the emotional baggage no matter where they went.
Eddie was average in school, but he loved to read. His schoolmates shunned Eddie because he was effeminate and shy. He had no friends. In 1944 Eddies brother Henry mysteriously died. ( In the Beginning)
Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven has sparked a much-needed emotional transformation inside my heart. It had quenched my thirsty body with the hope and comfort I had been seeking for the longest time. In The Five People You Meet In Heaven, Mitch Albom simply represents his version of what heaven could be like. Ideally, in this heaven, people who felt unimportant here on earth would realize, finally, how much they mattered and how much they were loved. This is the greatest gift God can give to you: to understand what happened in your life.
Everyone Eddie met in heaven taught him something about his life. They were all connected to him in different ways, whether it was someone close to him once, or a complete stranger. Somehow, all of their lives had crossed Eddie’s and helped make him the person that he had become. When you think about this lesson, you truly understand. One decision causes an effect, maybe on your life or maybe on someone else’s life. That effect will cause something else. It’s what I think of as a ripple effect. Everything happens for a reason, and all of the events that lead up to our “now” makes us who we are.
...re by men who died soon after, especially those in the chapter of last letters. It is important to note, however, that there seems to be two very distinct experiences in the war: one by those in the field, in the jungle, or in the villages, and one by those who remained on base. Without meaning to render their time insignificant, the latter experienced a less traumatic time in the war, with their access to Western luxuries like television and movies. They also had better access to showers, food, and to simplify it: they weren't being shot at all the time. Regardless, these men fought for their country, for themselves, and for their fellow soldier. They would do anything just to get out of the country alive.
...rt. With that, water rushed around Eddie, and he could here nothing. The rushing water takes him to Ruby Pier the way he remembered it from his childhood where he will wait for a certain little girl he had saved from death to come to him for answers about her life. Eddie will not be alone, though. He will have Marguerite, the captain, Joseph, and plenty of others with him. As Eddie sat with Marguerite, he heard the voice of God say, "Home."
Any novel or story needs strong major characters to create a logical plot line and to keep the reader engaged in the characters’ conflicts. With that said, minor characters can have just as big of an impact on a story as major characters do; as they sometimes act as an important symbol, or add minute but essential meaning to a story line. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the minor characters, George Wilson, Meyer Wolfsheim, and Pammy Buchanan to provide insight into the life of Jay Gatsby himself.
The soldiers feel that the only people they can talk to about the war are their “brothers”, the other men who experienced the Vietnam War. The friendship and kinship that grew in the jungles of Vietnam survived and lived on here in the United States. By talking to each other, the soldiers help to sort out the incidents that happened in the War and to put these incidents behind them. “The thing to do, we decided, was to forget the coffee and switch to gin, which improved the mood, and not much later we were laughing at some of the craziness that used to go on” (O’Brien, 29).
It is the story of a man named Eddie who for almost his whole life was the
The play was set in the nineteen fifties so Eddie would be told by me