The Five People You Meet In Heaven

Marguerite is the dark beauty Eddie falls in love with at first sight when he is only seventeen. Marguerite is the opposite of Eddie. Where Eddie holds on to anger, Marguerite allows anger to roll off her. She never outright blames Eddie for the accident that steals their chance to adopt a child. She never blames him for their inability to have children of their own, and she never carries her guilt for her inability to carry a child. Marguerite finds the good in every situation. When she and Eddie must move back into his childhood home, she finds joy in being able to see the Ferris wheel from the kitchen window. Marguerite is happy in simply having a life with the man she loves. To her, it does not matter where that life leads them.

Marguerite’s heaven is weddings. She loves the idea of potential and excitement that comes with each new beginning. Love plays a big part in Marguerite’s experiences. She never wavers when Eddie decides to enlist during the war. She never gives up on him even when his actions cause her to lose her chance at adoption. Marguerite is Eddie’s reason for surviving the war, she is the only joy he finds in his mundane life, and the reason why he continues pushing forward each day.

The Blue Man is a man who took an overdose of silver nitrate that caused a chemical reaction in his skin that turned it blue. He uses his appearance to perform in a sideshow act, first working for carnivals and later working at Ruby Pier. The Blue Man suffered from anxiety from the time he was a boy but finds a sense of family and community when he finally lands at Ruby Pier. The Blue Man is a friend of Eddie’s father and often plays cards with him. Eddie is too young to understand, but his father cared so much for the Blue Man that he insisted the whole family attend his funeral even though it falls on Eddie’s eighth birthday.

The Blue Man is the first person Eddie meets in heaven. His role is to reveal to Eddie that Eddie’s life was saved when he was just short of his eighth birthday because he had a purpose in life. Eddie stepped in front of the Blue Man’s car one afternoon and caused such an adrenaline rush in the Blue Man that his already weakened heart failed. The Blue Man tells Eddie that sometimes strangers touch someone’s life in what might appear to be an insignificant way can sometimes be a very significant event. As they talk, Eddie criticizes the fact that God felt the need to punish him with a lifelong job at Ruby Pier and then makes his heaven look exactly like Ruby Pier. However, the Blue Man shares with Eddie that the location of the Ruby Pier of Eddie’s childhood is the Blue Man’s heaven, because it was the only place in his life where he felt loved and accepted by his peers.

The captain is the second person Eddie meets in heaven. The captain came from a military family and felt the drive to become a successful soldier in his own right. Like Eddie and his relationship with his father, the captain wanted approval from his family. However, unlike Eddie, the captain was happy to follow in his father’s footsteps.

During his conversations with the captain, Eddie reveals that he, three other soldiers, and the captain were taken captive by Philippine soldiers. They were held for months and forced to work in a coal mine. One of their fellow soldiers was murdered. Eddie worked with the captain to find a way to escape, aware that there was a limit to how much time the men could withstand captivity after their fellow soldier’s death. Eddie creates a distraction, and the other soldiers take out the guards. As they prepare to leave, one of the soldiers suggests they burn the village where they were held. Eddie burns a building and believes he sees a figure moving in the flames. He tries to save the person, but one of the other soldiers tries to stop him. Seeing two of his men in danger, the captain fires a bullet into Eddie’s leg, leaving him with a devastating wound that impacts him for the rest of his life. Eddie learns that shortly thereafter, the captain is killed when he inadvertently steps on a landmine while searching for a clear path for their transport vehicle.

Eddie learns about sacrifice as he talks to the captain, but he is also presented with the way other’s expectations can impact a life. The captain was raised in a military family and all he knew were the unspoken rules of being a military leader. The captain knew it was his job to get his men home alive and he was going to do that no matter the personal cost. The captain succeeded in his duty for three of his men and lost his own life in the process. Eddie takes from this that sometimes sacrifice is an honorable thing. This interaction demonstrates how family pressure can have a lasting impact on a person and change the course of their life.

Ruby is the third person Eddie meets in heaven. Ruby was a waitress in a diner who married a wealthy man with a fascination for amusement parks. Ruby’s husband, Emile, built Ruby Pier and named it for her, but a fire left him bankrupt and injured. Ruby regrets the building of the park, something she shares with Eddie. Ruby also feels a great deal of guilt for everyone ever injured there, which is why her heaven is centered around a diner that contains shadows of every one of those victims, including Eddie’s father.

Ruby is the personification of Ruby Pier. She is a woman who was injured by something that was meant to be a joyful adventure. She is also a witness to the final moments of the life of Eddie’s father. She shows Eddie truths about his father that he would not have been able to see without her. Ruby’s heaven is designed to soothe her guilt over Ruby Pier, and as part of that, she guides Eddie in the forgiveness of his father. Ruby teaches Eddie that not everything that happens is what it seems. She shows him that there was more to his father than Eddie knew or understand and that his death was not intentional. She shows Eddie that his father’s final thoughts were of his family, exposing his father’s deep love for his family, putting everything Eddie witnessed throughout his life in a new light. It is this information that helps Eddie forgive his father.

Tala is the final person Eddie meets in heaven. Tala is a child of six or seven from the Philippines. Tala was hiding in a building that Eddie burned down the night he escaped from his Philippine captors. Tala is a beautiful, innocent child who speaks to Eddie in broken English. Her story has a profound impact on Eddie as it pulls together all the lessons he has learned in heaven and gives him insight into the meaning of his life.

Eddie always believed that his work at Ruby Pier was the simple work of an uneducated man. He believed his work had little to no impact on anyone else. However, after speaking to Tala, Eddie realizes how important his job was and how it allowed him to keep safe the hundreds of children who visited the park every year. Although Eddie was responsible for the Blue Man and Tala’s deaths, he more than made up for it by preventing unknown numbers of accidents at Ruby Pier. Once Eddie’s work was done, Tala pulled him into heaven to receive his reward, an understanding of his life and time in heaven with the woman he loves. Eddie leaves behind Dominquez, a young man he trained in the upkeep of the rides and left behind to continue his work.

Mickey Shea is a friend and coworker of Eddie’s father. Mickey is present at some of Eddie’s birthday celebrations when he is a child. Mickey offers Eddie advice when he practices his shooting abilities on a game at Ruby Pier. Mickey warns that when Eddie fires under combat conditions, he should shoot to kill. Mickey’s advice to Eddie implies that he has experience with a war zone. Mickey is also an important factor in the events that led to the death of Eddie’s father.

Mickey plays an important role in Eddie’s life because he is another example of what happens when a man is impacted by turmoil. Like Eddie, Mickey’s life was altered by some tragic event, and he responded to this tragedy by developing a drinking habit. Mickey’s drinking eventually leads to the loss of his job and his death. Mickey’s life is what Eddie’s could have become if he allowed his depression to lead to an addiction. While Eddie and Mickey were both deeply unhappy with their lives, they responded to this unhappiness in different ways. The same comparison applies to Mickey and Eddie’s fathers. Although Eddie’s father developed a gambling problem and was violent toward his children, he had a good heart and worked hard to provide for his family. Mickey provides a contrast to Eddie and his father that underscores how each person responds to the difficulties of life differently.

Dominquez is a young man who works at Ruby Pier in the maintenance department. Eddie is Dominquez’s supervisor. On the last day of his life, Eddie talks to Dominquez about his upcoming trip to Mexico to visit family. As part of their discussion, Eddie gives Dominquez some cash so that he can buy his wife a gift. Dominquez and Eddie also have a fishing line dangling from a hole in the boardwalk that they both monitor and hope will someday catch something.

When the Freddy Free Fall ride malfunctions, Eddie arrives first, but Dominquez is quickly behind him. Eddie sends Dominquez to the top of the ride to free the customers from the dangling car. It is also Dominquez to whom Eddie gives instructions, and Dominquez to whom he attempts to update those instructions when he realizes that his first assumption as to the cause of the malfunction is incorrect. In the end, Dominquez drops the car and causes Eddie’s death.

Dominquez is a minor character whom the reader only visits a few times in the novel. However, Dominquez is the closest thing Eddie had to a friend late in his life and he offers the pastor something to talk about in regard to Eddie’s life. Dominquez accompanies the lawyer to Eddie’s home to help settle his estate. Finally, he is one of only a handful of people who truly mourns Eddie’s death.