The Five People You Meet in Heaven
By Mitch Albom
What will you need to use this guide?
This guide will require you to annotate your book! To annotate
means to take notes and write down comments directly in your book.
This is an important strategy for good readers to use to help them better
understand what they have read as well as to use as a tool to review what
they have read. Annotating is a skill that you will use throughout your
life.
What is in this guide?
This reading guide will give you the help you need to make sense of this
novel. Here is what you will find:
o Background information: It is important that you read this
information before you begin reading. It will tell you some basic facts
about the book and the author.
o Focus: This book is divided into chapters based on different
characters that the main character encounters in heaven. Each
chapter is from a different character’s point of view on how the main
character touched their life.
o Keep track: By reading with a highlighter and a pen/pencil in hand,
you’ll become a more active reader. As you go through this guide,
there will be guided questions for you to look for in each chapter.
This will help you to keep track of what you have read and what is
most important. Of course, you might find other items of importance
and that is great! Make sure to designate in writing why you have
highlighted a particular section, this will help you when you go back to
review the book at the beginning of the school year.
o Pause and reflect: It is important to take time to write down
reactions to the material you have read. You only need to respond to
what you have read in 2-3 sentences at the end of each chapter. This
will help you to better summarize a chapter. You are also encouraged
to write comments and questions about what you have read while you
are reading and to make connections to your everyday life.
Background Information:
About the Author: MITCH ALBOM is the author of nine books,
including the newest, “For One More Day”, published 9/26/06. His first
novel, "The Five People You Meet in Heaven", (9/03) is the most
successful U.S. hardback first novel ever and has to date sold over 8
million copies worldwide "Tuesdays With Morrie," (1997) his chronicle of
time spent with a beloved but dying college professor, spent four years
on the NY Times bestsellers list and is now the most successful memoir
ever published. Both books were eventually turned into celebrated TV
films. The critically acclaimed “Five People You Meet in Heaven” aired on
ABC in winter, 2004. Oprah Winfrey produced the film version of
"Tuesdays With Morrie" in December 1999; starring Jack Lemmon and
Hank Azaria. The film garnered four Emmy awards, including best TV
film, director, actor and supporting actor.
Albom has founded three charities in the metropolitan Detroit area:
"The Dream Fund," established in 1989, allows disadvantaged children to
become involved with the arts. "A Time To Help," founded in 1998, brings
volunteers together once a month to tackle various projects in Detroit,
including staffing shelters, building homes with Habitat for Humanity,
and operating meals on wheels programs for the elderly. “S.A.Y Detroit,”
Albom’s most recent effort, is an umbrella program to fund shelters and
care for the homeless in his city. He also raises money for literacy
projects through a variety of means including his performances with The
Rock Bottom Remainders, a band made up of writers which includes
Steven King, Dave Barry, Scott Turrow, Amy Tan and Ridley Pearson.
Albom serves on the boards of various charities and, in 1999, was named
National Hospice Organization's Man of the Year.
About the Book: Eddie is a grizzled war veteran who feels trapped in a
meaningless life of fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. As the park
has changed over the years -- from the Loop-the-Loop to the Pipeline
Plunge -- so, too, has Eddie changed, from optimistic youth to embittered
old age. His days are a dull routine of work, loneliness, and regret.
Then, on his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic accident, trying to save
a little girl from a falling cart. With his final breath, he feels two small
hands in his -- and then nothing. He awakens in the afterlife, where he
learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden, but a place where your
earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it. These people
may have been loved ones or distant strangers. Yet each of them changed
your path forever.
One by one, Eddie's five people illuminate the unseen connections of his
earthly life. As the story builds to its stunning conclusion, Eddie
desperately seeks redemption in the still-unknown last act of his life: Was
it a heroic success or a devastating failure? The answer, which comes
from the most unlikely of sources, is as inspirational as a glimpse of
heaven itself.
Completing the Interactive Reading Guide:
Use the attached guide AS YOU READ!!!! You should make all marks
and comments in your book. You may also write out answers to the
questions on the Reading Guide, but make sure to list page numbers for
your answers. In addition to any marks you have been directed to mark,
you might want to use the following symbols:
? for any questions
* for any words or concepts that you don’t understand
Completing the Character Chart:
As you read, note the different characters goals and motivations and
note them in the attached chart. These goals and motivations of each
characters might change throughout the novel and this will assist you in
keeping track of this.
Good luck and happy reading! Enjoy your summer!
Interactive Reading Guide:
1. Eddie exists in a "weary state of acceptance" (5). Explain what Albom
means by this statement. How did Eddie come to be in this state?
2. The author divulges important information about Eddie's life by
detailing 15 of his birthdays. How does this interesting device illuminate
Eddie's character? Do you like Eddie? Why or why not?
3. What does Eddie's relationship with Dominguez reveal about his
character?
4. Think about Eddie's volatile relationship with his father. How does it
affect your opinion about Eddie?
5. Albom writes: "People say they 'find' love, as if it were an object by a
rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and
woman. What people find then is a certain love" (155). Discuss Albom's
idea of love. What kind of love did Eddie and Marguerite share?
6. When Eddie is with Marguerite, he "as always…mostly wants to freeze
time" (78). Have you ever experienced a moment that you wanted "to
freeze." List the moments and explain.
7. Albom quite ably stirs up his reader's emotions. How does the author
accomplish this? What techniques do writers use to draw in their
readers?
8. What are Eddie's first sensations of being in heaven?
9. Trace the cause for the malfunction of Freddy's Free Fall ride to
Eddie's death. What does the cause of Eddie's death have to do with the
theme of the book?
Character Chart:
Character/Stage
in life or location
where Eddie
meets up with
them again
Blue Man
The Captain
Ruby
Role in Eddie’s Life (how
Eddie knew this person) Be
Specific, give page numbers
and exact events
Life Lesson Taught to
Eddie
Marguerite
Tala