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

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Ruby Pier/Home

Ruby Pier is an amusement park set near an unnamed ocean. As a child, Eddie spends most of his days at Ruby Pier because his father is a ride mechanic. At first, like any child, Eddie sees Ruby Pier as an exciting, colorful place full of adventure. Eddie meets a variety of people there and he learns to juggle as well as shoot guns, and it is at Ruby Pier where he meets his future wife, Marguerite. Ruby Pier is the center of Eddie’s world as a kid, but he never intended to stay there. Eddie dreamed of leaving the area and becoming an engineer. His father is offended by Eddie’s changing attitude toward Ruby Pier because he feels that Eddie believes he is too good for the life his father has lived.

Eddie goes to war and his experiences combined with a devastating injury to his leg causing him to give up on his dreams and take a job driving a taxi. He feels trapped in his depression and his choices, but at least he’s not working the same dead-end job his father worked his entire life. However, when Eddie’s father dies unexpectedly and his mother begins to decline, he returns to his childhood home and takes a job at Ruby Pier. Eddie is angry at his father because he feels his father somehow chose to die the way he did so that Eddie would be stuck taking on his responsibilities.

When Eddie dies, he dies while attempting to save a little girl from a malfunctioning ride. Ruby Pier features dominantly in his heaven, first as the chosen heaven of the Blue Man, as a source of knowledge in his escape from imprisonment in the Philippines, as a mutual albatross with the original Ruby, and finally as the place where he served atonement for the death of Tala. As Eddie moves through heaven, he begins to see Ruby Pier through a different lens, eventually seeing all the times his wife called it home and all the good he did by keeping the children of Ruby Pier safe from the possibility of a malfunctioning ride. For Eddie, Ruby Pier is more than just a setting. It becomes a symbol of all the penultimate moments in his life and the home he and Marguerite built for themselves both in life and in death.

Box of Mementos

After Eddie dies, a lawyer representing his estate discovers a box hidden in a drawer in his bedroom. To the lawyer, this box is filled with useless trinkets that have no meaning to him. However, as the lawyer picks through the items, these items are shown to hold value and represent important people and moments in Eddie’s life.

Inside the box is a faded Polaroid picture, an army medal with a letter, an old deck of cards, a Chinese restaurant menu, and a black bow tie. The bow tie is from the clothing his brother Joe wore on the day of the Blue Man’s funeral. It’s likely also a tie Eddie wore in later years for funerals and school dances. The Chinese restaurant menu is from the restaurant where Eddie and Marguerite were married. The deck of cards belonged to Eddie’s father. Eddie took them as a memento of his father after his death. The army medal and letter are an accolade Eddie earned during his service in the war. Finally, the Polaroid picture is one Marguerite took of Eddie on his birthday surrounded by children at Ruby Pier.

The box of mementos is symbolic of the richness of Eddie’s life. While the lawyer believes that leaving behind a fat portfolio and a pension is a symbol of a life well-lived, Eddie left behind memories of moments that represented the things that truly mattered to him. These mementos might not be worth much financially, but they meant the world to Eddie.

Freddy’s Free Fall and Other Rides

Ruby Pier is an amusement park, and as such, it boasted a variety of exciting rides to entertain customers. It was Eddie’s job to maintain these rides. It is a fine line between excitement and terror, and Eddie walked that line to keep the customers safe. Eddie felt that any monkey could do the job he did, but he didn’t stop to consider how delicate the machines were and how he could tell just by the sound of the working machinery if something was wrong. In the final moment of his life, as he is approaching the malfunctioning Freddy’s Free Fall, Eddie is running through his mind the mechanical parts of the ride and what could cause one of the cars to fall off the track. At first, he goes on instinct and orders the car to be released so that they can inspect it at the bottom of the ride. However, as he continues to analyze the machine in his head, he realizes that an unlikely scenario is playing out, one that only he or someone as well trained as he could have figured out.

Eddie sees his life as pointless based highly on his dead-end job at Ruby Pier, the same job his father before him held. Eddie is so consumed by what he could have done with his life that he does not see what he did do with his life. Mechanics are often looked down upon, criticized for not having the ambition to seek out better work, and Eddie allows this opinion within himself, sadly the same opinion he had of his father, to define who he is. The rides become a symbol of the uselessness and unimportant aspect of his life.

After Eddie dies and he begins to learn the lessons the five people he meets in heaven have for him, he begins to understand that his job at Ruby Pier was not unimportant. Not only that, but he begins to understand why he saw his father in such a light and how that light began to shine on his own life. When Eddie meets Tala, he realizes how many children he kept safe at Ruby Pier and how keeping them safe in some small way made up for the death he inadvertently caused for Tala. Therefore, the rides symbolize redemption and forgiveness for Eddie as well as for his father.