The Five People You Meet in Heaven Study Guide

Chapter 4: The First Lesson

Eddie learns his first lesson from the Blue Man. Eddie feels terrible about killing the Blue Man and cannot understand what good came from the Blue Man's death. The Blue Man tells Eddie that in life, there are no random encounters and that we are all connected in some way.

The Blue Man had completed one of his steps in heaven and has to leave. As he leaves his skin turns back to a perfect caramel color, unblemished and smooth.

The chapter then leads us back to the day Eddie died to briefly describe the aftermath of the accident at Ruby Pier.

We are then lead back to a scene from Eddie's seventeenth birthday. Eddie's brother, Joe, tells his parents that Eddie met a girl the previous night (Marguerite) and that Eddie said he was going to marry her. Eddie gets mad at Joe and punches him in the arm several times and they even engage in a minor fight. Eddie and his mother dance as he and Marguerite had; she then passes Eddie off to Joe and the two, jokingly, try to dance with each other.

Notes

Eddie learns his first lesson from the Blue Man. The lesson can be portrayed by the quote, "...there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind" (48).

The Blue Man brings Eddie back to the scene of his funeral. The Blue Man states that many of the people at his funeral did not even know him well, yet they came anyway. This is because the human spirit knows, in some way, that all lives intersect. The Blue Man continues to tell Eddie that there is a balance between life and death; he states that many people have probably died instead of him, and this is common to all of us, also that there is a balance and birth and death are two parts to a whole. He then states that this is the reason why humans are drawn to babies and funerals.

Eddie still does not seem to understand what good came from the Blue Man's death. The Blue Man says that the "good" is that Eddie was able to live.

The Blue Man says that this step, for him, is over and he must go. As he leaves, Eddie can see the Blue Man's skin return to normal, perfect skin.