Mitch Albom's The When He Got To Heaven

Connected in Many Ways
Have you ever wondered if you have made a decision that would not only impact your life, but also someone else's? Mitch Albom's way of creating what his image of heaven looks like, is through the use of different people from Eddie's past to teach him lessons from his previous experiences. Eddie’s first lesson when he get to heaven is that everyone is connected in one way or another, which would be the theme of the novel. The Blue Man taught Eddie this lesson, which made him open his eyes to what happened in his past. Eddie learned that his decisions not only impacted himself, but the people around him. Mitch Albom uses the Blue Man's lesson to demonstrate how everyone is connected to each other in the novel "the …show more content…
The Blue Man told Eddie how he died, and how Eddie was part of it. The Blue Man told Eddie, "It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect" (Albom, 48). The Blue Man uses this quote to explain that, even when one is dead or alive, somehow everyone is connected to one another. He also uses this quote to explain that when one is alive their actions may have cost someone their life. The Blue Man was called the Blue Man because when he was younger he drink a lot of silver nitrate which made his skin turn blue. Eddie remembers seeing the Blue Man when he was younger, performing in the freak show. Eddie even went to the Blue Man's funeral when he was young. The human spirit knows how everyone is connected even when they are not alive. Eddie went out into the street to get the baseball they were throwing. In order to miss hitting Eddie, the Blue Man swerved and went up another street just to crash and have a heart attack all alone. Eddie told the Blue Man in response to his story, "But we barely knew each other. I might as well have been a stranger" (49). Eddie uses these words to explain that even though they were strangers to one another at the time, they were connected in some way. Eddie may not have known the Blue Man personally as he says he did, but he did impact the Blue Man's life. This explains that one person whom maybe a stranger impacts other people …show more content…
When they finally escaped the group decided to set the hut on fire, but Eddie soon saw a shadowy figure. None, of the other members of his unit saw this figure but Eddie insisted on going back to the hut to see. Eddie had "stepped forward convinced that something innocent was being burned to death in front of him" (83), Eddie was trying to save the figure that convinced him something was burning, but could not. Eddie was convinced that he saw something burning and his actions to do something not only impacted his life but the innocent life that was being burned to death in the hut. Eddie could not save the figure that was being burned due to the fact that his captain wanted to save his life instead of taking his life for maybe nothing. Later in his journey in heaven he meets a girl named Tala who was his fifth person. When Eddie saw Tala, "Her skin was horribly burned. Her torso and narrow shoulders where black and charred and blisted" (189). This description of Tala helped Eddie realized that she was the innocent death in the hut. This haunted his dreams and affected his way of living not knowing he did not save that figure. Knowing that Eddie could not save that figure and being haunted in his dreams his whole life is how he was connected to