The Red String
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom centers around the life of Eddie, a man who spent his time alive fixing things. Over the course of the novel, Eddie’s past is told through birthdays and post-mortem teachings. The Five People You Meet in Heaven provides a philosophical look into the purpose of death, and what happens after. All lives are connected. This is seen in all religions and cultures, as well as ideas of fate, heaven, life, and death, and the lessons taught through the five people Eddie meets through his journey. The connectedness and failings of humanity help to provide an answer to the awakening, and to what society needs in order to progress.
In Chinese mythology, it is said that a red string connects …show more content…
With each stage, the deceased goes through their life, from beginning to end, and learns. However, with each lesson, Eddie begins to rot away. With the fourth person, he meets his wife. In this romance is the idea of love, “a grateful love… deep but quiet… irreplaceable” (254). Love, in modern society, is viewed with several lenses. The first is the lens of romance, the puppy love, the candlelit dinners. The second is the lens of abuse, the hatred, the anger, the hurt. And the third lens, the lens of truth. Love is often described in two extremes, either leading to happiness or leading to grief and depression. However, love, in life and in fiction is many times a savior. It heals and empowers, it is a leaver, not a taker. Hatred and anger are the takers of emotional life; they damage the soul. Albom describes this in his fourth lesson, that love is necessary. Society views love as something it can control, something it can limit. This is not possible. Our idea of love, and what we can do to it, needs to change in order for our society to heal. It is so permeated with hatred and anger and loss, and we need to allow love inside if we ever want to change it. If all lives are connected, then why do we hate? Why do we fill the souls of others with the anger and negativity that we feel, instead of nurturing and loving their souls? Is it not the soul that religion describes as …show more content…
The negative connotation of the word denotes violence and pain, it is a weapon. Weapons are used by soldiers, whose purpose, initially, is to protect, but in a war, their purpose is to kill. Eddie was a soldier, and the war he fought took his sense of self from him, “Soldiers, in his day, did what they had to do and didn’t speak of it once they came home” (280). Weapons: guns, knives, gasoline and matches. The purpose of them is to hurt. Their production damages the environment, and their existence damages society. The last person Eddie meets in heaven is a child he killed. In his last moments alive, he met a child he tried to save. The juxtaposition of Eddie’s roles in these children’s lives shows the juxtaposed roles of a soldier. A soldier is trained to be a weapon, to take from others, to cause damage. But the entire time, they are being trained with the purpose to protect. Society must stop producing weapons if we wish to
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom centers around the life of Eddie, a man who spent his time alive fixing things. Over the course of the novel, Eddie’s past is told through birthdays and post-mortem teachings. The Five People You Meet in Heaven provides a philosophical look into the purpose of death, and what happens after. All lives are connected. This is seen in all religions and cultures, as well as ideas of fate, heaven, life, and death, and the lessons taught through the five people Eddie meets through his journey. The connectedness and failings of humanity help to provide an answer to the awakening, and to what society needs in order to progress.
In Chinese mythology, it is said that a red string connects …show more content…
With each stage, the deceased goes through their life, from beginning to end, and learns. However, with each lesson, Eddie begins to rot away. With the fourth person, he meets his wife. In this romance is the idea of love, “a grateful love… deep but quiet… irreplaceable” (254). Love, in modern society, is viewed with several lenses. The first is the lens of romance, the puppy love, the candlelit dinners. The second is the lens of abuse, the hatred, the anger, the hurt. And the third lens, the lens of truth. Love is often described in two extremes, either leading to happiness or leading to grief and depression. However, love, in life and in fiction is many times a savior. It heals and empowers, it is a leaver, not a taker. Hatred and anger are the takers of emotional life; they damage the soul. Albom describes this in his fourth lesson, that love is necessary. Society views love as something it can control, something it can limit. This is not possible. Our idea of love, and what we can do to it, needs to change in order for our society to heal. It is so permeated with hatred and anger and loss, and we need to allow love inside if we ever want to change it. If all lives are connected, then why do we hate? Why do we fill the souls of others with the anger and negativity that we feel, instead of nurturing and loving their souls? Is it not the soul that religion describes as …show more content…
The negative connotation of the word denotes violence and pain, it is a weapon. Weapons are used by soldiers, whose purpose, initially, is to protect, but in a war, their purpose is to kill. Eddie was a soldier, and the war he fought took his sense of self from him, “Soldiers, in his day, did what they had to do and didn’t speak of it once they came home” (280). Weapons: guns, knives, gasoline and matches. The purpose of them is to hurt. Their production damages the environment, and their existence damages society. The last person Eddie meets in heaven is a child he killed. In his last moments alive, he met a child he tried to save. The juxtaposition of Eddie’s roles in these children’s lives shows the juxtaposed roles of a soldier. A soldier is trained to be a weapon, to take from others, to cause damage. But the entire time, they are being trained with the purpose to protect. Society must stop producing weapons if we wish to