Michael Albom's The Five People You Meet In Heaven

There are many different types of text structure that each results in different interpretations of literary texts. Some authors use several text structures in a single written piece. Michael Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven tells the story of the death and aftermath of maintenance worker Eddie. An example of En Media Res, the book begins “This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end with Eddie dying in the sun.” (Albom 1) Albom’s use of Cause and Effect structure or Sequence structure throughout the book can be analyzed by understanding chronology of Eddie’s life, the experience of heaven, and the present time. The text begins at the end with Eddie's death. This allows the reader to focus on the events happening leading up to this death starting way back. In regards to the Sequence text structure, the author uses repetends in chronological order to help explain the events leading to Eddie’s death at the pier. “It is 1920, a crowded hospital in one of the poorest sections of the city.” (Albom 19) Each of these
sections begins is titled “Today is Eddie's Birthday.” The author goes from his birth in 1920 until 82 years of age because the book begins on his 83rd birthday exactly 60 minutes prior to his death. This brings up another example of Sequence structure in the life of Eddy. Albom uses the first eighteen pages of the book to describe in detail the event to occur in the last hour of the protagonist’s life. After Eddie dies he finds himself in heaven although he does not know it. This phenomenon is introduced to him by the Blue Man. The Blue Man, along with the Captain, Ruby, Marguerite, and Tala are the five people that Eddie meets in heaven. Each is there to teach Eddie a lesson to help him understand his 83 years of life in Earth. Albom uses the titles to also exemplify text structure: The First Person Eddie Meets in Heaven, The First Lesson, The Second Person Eddie Meets in Heaven, The Second Lesson, and so on and so forth until five. While this shows sequence, the Authors also uses these different times to shows Cause and Effect text structure. For example, Eddie was the reason for the Blue Man's death because he ran in front of his car as a boy to get a ball and caused the Blue Man to have a heart attack. Another example would be that Eddie’s second person, the Captain, is the reason for Eddie’s bad leg because he shot Eddie to save his life. In addition, Eddie’s third person, Ruby, is the namesake for the amusement park that employed Eddie for a number of years.”’If not for Emile, I would have no husband. If not for marriage, there would be no pier. If there’d been no pier, you would not have ended up working there.’”(Albom 123) The matter of the fact is Eddie is connected to all of his greeters in heaven and they all affect him in a major way. Each teaches him a lesson to help him understand his meaning of life. Lastly, the author uses one last time period to explain text structure: the present on Earth. The flashbacks help tie the story together because it starts in the middle, the present in heaven is essential to follow the protagonist, and the author uses the present on Earth to show the effects of the protagonist’s death which is Cause and Effect text structure. The Sequence is present in the same way that Eddie’s birthday repetends were structured. Each section begins with a day and a time such as THURSDAY, 11 A.M. “Who would pay for Eddie’s funeral? He had not relatives. He’d left no instructions.” (Albom 145) This particular quote shows how discombobulated those who remain are.The present time blurbs are not the meat of the text but they bring everything together to keep the reader interested. The author is able to use text structure to develop these themes due to a third person omniscient narrator because could not achieve this knowledge as a first person. As one can see, Eddie's life, death, and experiences in heaven all demonstrate how Sequence/Order text structure as well as Cause/Effect text structure are present in The Five People You Meet in Heaven.
The clarity given in the chapter titles is part of the text structure and organizes the novel in a way that makes the reader not have to follow who is who or where the setting is. It makes that part easy which in turn make understanding and analyzing the themes the point and not focusing on the basic things. En Media Res also does this by starting the story in a place other than the beginning so that the reader can follow the journey which just so happens to be the name of the first chapter of Albom’s award winning novel The Five People You Meet in Heaven. It is structured for ease of clarification but a challenge put embark on the quest of who Eddie really was and how his five people changed his life in Heaven and on
Earth.