The Five People You Meet In Heaven

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THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN What is heaven? It seems there are numberless ideas today of what "heaven" is like. The fact of the matter is that no one of us can say for certain. Some believe that heaven is where we look back at our lives here on Earth as a way of learning from our mistakes. Author Mitch Albom wrote a story entitled The Five People You Meet in Heaven that follows one man through such a journey. In the story, a man named Eddie is tragically killed in an accident. What follows is his journey to heaven where he meets five people along the way. Each of the five people are there to teach Eddie a different lesson that he must learn before he enters heaven. Each of the five people Eddie meets in heaven present ideas that serve as the themes of this novel. The five lessons that Eddie must learn are: that every person is interconnected in some way, sacrifice, forgiveness, understanding, and that he did not need to be famous to make a difference in the lives of those around him. Each of the lessons that Eddie learns are the themes of the novel that Albom would have the audience take away from the story. Eddie spent his entire life living in the same place. Like his father before him, Eddie worked as a maintenance supervisor at the local amusement park. When Eddie died, he first found himself in the park he had know all his life. There, he was met by one of the workers Eddie had know from when he was a kid. The man he met told him a story about when Eddie was a kid. Eddie and his friend were playing catch when their ball landed in the street. When Eddie went to retrieve it, a car swerved out of the way, nearly hitting him. The man then told Eddie the same story, this time from the point of view o... ... middle of paper ... ...rked tirelessly without feeling that he had accomplished anything. The main character Eddie lived a life much like that of Albom's uncle. When Eddie died, he was sent on a journey where he met with five different people who were there to teach Eddie. These five lessons are also the five themes of this novel. These include: that every person is interconnected in some way, sacrifice, forgiveness, understanding, and that we do not need to be famous to make a difference in the lives of those around us. Albom effectively uses the storyline to make these points to the reader. The audience walks away from the story with the sense of what Albom was trying to do when he wrote the story. WORKS CITED "About the ‘Real' Eddie," available online at http://www.albomfivepeople.com/abouteddie.htm, April 3, 2006. Albom, Mitch The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Hyperion, N

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