The five people you meet in heaven

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The Five People You Will Meet In Heaven is a 2003 book by Mitch Albom . It originally appeared on Disney Hyperion in 2003. In 2004, a film adaptation was made. The action begins with the death of the main character, named Eddie Maintenance due to his profession, who works as a mechanic at an amusement park called Ruby Pier. When an attraction there threatens to kill a young girl, he dies trying to save her. The book has been translated into a total of 35 languages ​​and published in 38 regions, in Germany by Goldmann Verlag . In most versions, a ferris wheel is depicted on the cover .

action

The main plot of the book begins with the death of Eddie, an old man who works as a mechanic at the Ruby Pier amusement park. Here he is responsible for maintaining the devices. He is called Eddie Maintenance because the badges are arranged on his uniform, using the name mostly for fun or by children who Eddie is very popular with. Eddie has a bad limp from a knee injury sustained during World War II. While rumor has it that another soldier in Eddie's unit was responsible, there is little more than speculation about the details.

On Eddie's 83rd birthday, he dies from a falling attraction. The people in the attraction had been evacuated, but a young girl would have been killed by the car. Eddie tries to save it by pulling it out of the way, but reaches it too late and dies trying. At the beginning he doesn't know whether he could prevent the girl's death. He just feels his hands in his own before he dies.

When he wakes up, he finds himself in a twisted version of Ruby Pier, where he meets the blue man, an employee of the curiosity cabinet at Ruby Pier that closed its doors when Eddie was young. He feels young and agile again, and the blue man explains why: Now that he is dead, Eddie must meet five people on whose lives he had a great influence or who had a great influence on him. To do this, he visits their heaven and feels there again as he felt when he knew her.

The blue man finally explains their connection to Eddie: Eddie was the reason for his death by chasing a ball into the street and thus killing the blue man that drove by that day. Eddie learns here that all lives are interconnected, even if it often doesn't seem so.

After meeting the blue man, Eddie finds himself on a war-torn island in the Philippines . Here, on a tree, he meets his superior from his time in the army. The captain reminds Eddie of the time they were captured by locals in the war. There Eddie's unit had set fire to the locals' huts to escape, but Eddie had seen a shadow trapped in the fire. The captain admits that at that moment it was he who shot Eddie in the knee to save him from finding his certain death in the flames while trying to save this shadow. This injury would stay with Eddie his entire life and be one of the reasons Eddie could never take a job outside of the pier, along with his mother's late illness and the fact that the job his father inherited was the only reliable source of money.

From the captain, Eddie also learns how the captain died: through a land mine that he set off while looking for a safe path for the rest of the squad, who followed in a wagon. So Eddie owes his life to the captain again, because the expression would have hit the car if the captain hadn't triggered it. This is how Eddie learns about people's willingness to make sacrifices.

In the end, in this scene, which now turns out to be a tropical paradise and not the battlefield he remembers, Eddie receives a helmet with the image of his late wife Marguerite, which indicates her role in the later course.

The next scene Eddie finds himself in is a snowy landscape, where he finds a small diner. He sees his father through a window, but he doesn't notice him, instead he is approached by a woman who turns out to be Ruby, the inspiration for the name of Ruby Pier. Heaven is a place for those who were harmed by Ruby Pier, who suffered from the amusement park too. After her fiancé Emile built it in her honor, the park became more and more of a burden to her, especially after Emile was seriously injured in a fire in the park and had to rely on her for years, especially after using the park for little Money had to sell. She explains to Eddie that this is why a man like Eddie's father, whom Eddie remembers as violent and cold, is here, and clarifies the truth about his father's death. Eddie learns that his father saved Micky Shea, his friend, from drowning, even though Micky had previously tried drunk to rape Eddie's mother. This act led to the pneumonia that later killed him.

After saying goodbye to Ruby, Eddie finds himself in a room with many doors, each of which leads to a different wedding. Here he meets Marguerite, whose love for weddings and the feelings of those involved created this heaven. She and Eddie spend some time together talking about things they never had a chance to talk about. Eddie asks her forgiveness for never making more of his or her life, but Marguerite explains that she was not unhappy with her life and that she only regrets not having had children.

Meanwhile, an Eddie employee, Dominguez, finds a box full of memorabilia in his house, including a menu from the Chinese restaurant where Eddie and Marguerite were married. Here Eddie learns that love even outlasts death, even if it sometimes takes on other forms.

Although Eddie is reluctant, he finally has to step into the next and last heaven. Here he is on a river where children play and meets a young Asian girl named Tala. Although they hardly speak the same language, Tala can convey to him that she was the shadow Eddie saw in the fire in the Philippines, which finally proves that the shadow was not a pipe dream but real. Tala's skin becomes burnt flesh and scars, a sign of her suffering when she died, and Eddie collapses at the revelation.

However, Tala goes back to the river and tells Eddie to wash her out of the river with a flat stone, as the other children do among themselves. Although Eddie doesn't know what to do at first and refuses, Eddie makes him try and to his amazement he washes away the burns and scars he left her with the stone and restores her skin to health .

After her recovery, Eddie asks Tala if she can tell him if he could save the girl on the pier. Tala explains that it was her hands that Eddie felt, not the little girl's, as she pulled him safely up into the sky. He managed to push the girl away and thus saved his life. With this act and all the years in which he has made the attractions at Ruby Pier safe for children like her, according to Tala, he has atone for her death.

Eventually Eddie finds himself in his heaven, the place where he first met Marguerite, a salon on Ruby Pier. Here he can see all of the lives he has saved in the course of his work as Eddie Maintenance and what impact these would have on the future. Again, the blue man's lesson becomes important: all lives are interconnected.

main characters

Eddie : Also called Eddie Maintenance thanks to the nameplate on his uniform. He works as a mechanic at Ruby Pier, an amusement park. He dies on his 83rd birthday at the beginning of the book, according to which the afterlife brings him in contact with five people whose lives he shaped or who had a great influence on his life.

Marguerite : Eddie's wife whom he married after returning from the war. He met her at Ruby Pier. She died of a brain tumor when she was 47, and she is the fourth person Eddie has met.

The Blue Man : The Blue Man is the first person Eddie meets in heaven. He worked on Ruby Pier as an attraction in the Cabinet of Curiosities due to his blue skin. This was a result of taking silver nitrate , which he had been prescribed as medicine. Eddie contacts him when he is still a child and chases a ball into the street, causing the blue man to dodge the car and die of the shock.

The captain : Eddie's superior when he was in the army. He was the one who shot Eddie in the leg trying to get him out of his hysteria and died by a land mine trying to find a safe path.

Ruby : Ruby is the third person Eddie meets. As the fiancée of the founder of Ruby Pier, the park was named after her.

Emile : The founder of Ruby Pier and Ruby's fiance. He died in a fire in the park.

Tala : A young Filipino girl and the fifth person Eddie meets. She is the shadow Eddie saw in the fire and that haunted him in his nightmares.

Eddie's Parents : Eddie's mother is known only as a warm, kind person who took care of him and his brother. However, his father is described as strict and violent. He dies of pneumonia.

Micky Shea : A friend of Eddie's parents. He tries to rape Eddie's mother, but is stopped by Eddie's father and is the cause of the pneumonia of the father, who has to save him from drowning as he escapes from said father.

The Little Girl : The girl Eddie was trying to save in the roller coaster accident.

Nicky : A young man whose lost keys damage the cables of the roller coaster that Eddie later kills. Unknowingly, he is the reason for Eddie's death. At the same time he claims to be the great grandson of Ruby himself.

Movie

The film version of the book was released in 2004, with Jon Voight in the lead role. He remains true to the book in most respects, save for a few details.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The five people you meet in heaven in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Web links