The Five People You Meet In Heaven

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2003

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-5

Chapters 6-7

Chapters 8-9

Chapters 10-11

Chapters 12-13 and Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

An Unimportant Life

Society often places value on the behavior, achievements, and accumulation of material goods of a human being when judging a life. A rich man with many material items left behind is often considered a person who lived a very good life. A man who is unhoused, by contrast, leaves behind evidence of a life that is considered inconsequential and even embarrassing. A celebrity might be revered because of their body of work and their charitable contributions, while a single parent might be viewed as ineffectual if they chose their family over ambition. There are varying degrees of a life lived by a person that might be judged, but if a person dies with little to show for their life, i.e., money or material things, they are often considered to have lived an unimportant life.

In this novel, Eddie believes his life is unimportant because he failed to become the engineer he dreamed of being and he never left his hometown. He moved back into his childhood home and worked the same job his father worked for many years before him. It felt like he was stuck in a life he’d criticized when it was his father’s life. Eddie believes that he was ignored by God and that he made no real impact on the world around him in his lifetime. By his estimation of what constitutes an important life, Eddie failed. This idea is emphasized when the lawyer judges Eddie’s life, declaring that he is glad he has a healthy portfolio and won’t be leaving behind only a “tidy kitchen” (177). It is also emphasized when Eddie argues with his father and his father repeatedly asks if working at Ruby Pier “ain’t good enough for you” (125).

When Eddie arrives in heaven and sees the other side of many of the penultimate moments of his life, he begins to understand that his life touched many more people than he knew. He also sees that many people made sacrifices for him and that those sacrifices guided him down the path his life would take. Eddie understands there was a purpose to the many moments of his life that he believed were unimportant. He impacted a great many people and without him, many of the lives that interacted with his own would have been different. This knowledge changes Eddie’s definition of what an unimportant life constitutes. His life might have been unimportant to some, but it was important to him.

Understanding Forgiveness

Forgiveness is the act of forgiving or being forgiven. As Eddie begins his journey through heaven, he begins to learn of interactions within his life that had consequences he was not aware of. When he meets the Blue Man who was a member of the freak show at Ruby Pier when he was a child, he learns that as a nearly eight-year-old boy, he was responsible for a near accident that led to the Blue Man’s fatal heart attack. The Blue Man does not blame Eddie for his death, but Eddie at once begs for forgiveness for this event he wasn’t even aware he caused. When Eddie meets the second person in heaven, he discovers that it was his captain who shot him in the leg, leaving him with a devastating injury that affected the rest of his life. Eddie is angry and attacks his former captain but is quickly remorseful when he learns that his captain died hours later to help his men flee to safety.

Forgiveness continues as a topic of conversation in Eddie’s experiences in heaven when he meets the original Ruby, the woman for whom Ruby Pier was named. Ruby’s heaven consists of a diner where those injured in some way at Ruby Pier come to gather in a diner. Ruby is looking for forgiveness for the pain Ruby Pier has caused all these people. At the same time, Eddie’s father sits in the diner and Ruby helps Eddie to understand his father better and to find it within himself to forgive him. Finally, when Eddie meets Tala, he discovers the darkest secret of all in the fact that he was responsible for Tala’s death because she hid inside a building Eddie burned down. Eddie saw her inside the flames, but the captain’s shot to his leg stopped him from going inside to rescue her.

As a theme of the novel, forgiveness becomes something Eddie must both offer to and request from the people in his life. It can be argued that Eddie shouldn’t have to ask forgiveness for things he had no control over, such as the Blue Man’s heart attack. However, Eddie needs to see that sometimes a person’s actions can adversely affect others and those actions will have an impact on that person’s life. Just like Eddie caused the Blue Man’s death, his father also altered the course of his life by dying. However, Eddie’s father did not intend to die the way he did. When Eddie learns that his father was trying to save a friend’s life as he died, Eddie is given insight into his father’s character that he did not have before. Because of his father’s unhappiness and frustration within himself, he treated his sons with violence and neglect, but with his new understanding of his father, Eddie is allowed to see that he and his father were not so different, and they both struggled in similar ways. This understanding coupled with the other lessons Eddie has learned, he can ask Tala for forgiveness for something he sees as an unforgivable act and receives it in the knowledge that he spent his life repenting for his actions by protecting the children of Ruby Pier.

Learning Sacrifice

When Eddie meets the captain, he learns about sacrifice. Eddie suffered terribly in the Philippines during the war, but he did not suffer alone. With him were three other soldiers and the captain. Eddie felt alone and he struggled with his captivity, but they eventually made it out and Eddie was able to go home. Unfortunately, he went home with a bullet in his leg that left him with a terrible limp and ongoing pain for the rest of his life.

The captain tells Eddie that he died that night checking the road ahead as Eddie laid in delirium in the back of a transport truck. Eddie did not know this. Eddie is saddened by this information, and it causes him to regret his angry reaction when he learned that the captain was the one who shot him in the leg. The captain tells Eddie that had he not died that night by stepping on a landmine, the truck would likely have rolled over it and all the soldiers would have died. Instead, Eddie and two other men were able to escape enemy lines. It was a sacrifice the captain was happy to make because it allowed him to be satisfied with the knowledge that he’d fulfilled his promise to get all his men home safe. He tells Eddie that he, too made a sacrifice in taking the bullet to his leg, because it not only allowed Eddie to return home and live his life but saved the life of the other soldier who was trying to keep Eddie from going into the burning building.

The theme of sacrifice appears in many of the chapters. For example, the Blue Man tells Eddie that he caused his fatal heart attack by chasing his ball into the street causing the Blue Man to swerve his car to avoid hitting him. The adrenaline of the near accident caused the Blue Man’s already weak heart to fail. Eddie focuses on the guilt of his actions, but the Blue Man sees it as his sacrifice that allowed Eddie to continue his life and become the man he did. The theme appears again when Eddie begins to understand his father a little better and realizes that his father was a hard-working man who sacrificed his dreams for the family he raised. When Eddie meets with his wife, Marguerite, it becomes clear that Marguerite made some sacrifices in her life to be with Eddie, most notably her desire to have children. Marguerite waited until Eddie agreed to adoption before putting the process into motion, only to have it taken from her when an accident caused her to have to back out. At the same time, Eddie also sacrificed having children by marrying a woman who could not bear children. Finally, Tala presents an important sacrifice. Her life was sacrificed so that Eddie would go on to work at Ruby Pier and keep the children safe for many, many years by maintaining the rides.

The theme of sacrifice is a ribbon that weaves in and out of Eddie’s life, revealed to him in its entirety at the end of his meetings with the five people in heaven. Eddie learns five lessons that teach him that sometimes a person must sacrifice for a loved one or even a perfect stranger to allow fate or God’s plan to play out the way it is meant to do. Many people made sacrifices for Eddie’s life to unfold how it did, but he also made sacrifices to allow others to live their specific path. The novel begins with the ultimate sacrifice when Eddie throws himself in the path of Freddy’s Free Fall car to save Amy or Annie from his fate.