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Chapter 8
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Five People You Meet in Heaven, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Redemption and Forgiveness
The Connection Between All Humans
The Cycle of Life and Death
The Value in Ordinary Life
Time
Gender Roles
Summary
Analysis
It is Eddie’s eighth birthday, and he is complaining that he doesn’t want to attend the funeral that his mother is dressing him for. His mother explains that, “Sometimes you have to do things when sad things happen.” At the funeral for the unnamed departed at Ruby Pier, Eddie knows he should be expressing sadness along with the adults. Still, he cannot stop thinking about how it’s unfair to have to go to a funeral on his birthday. He waits for the funeral to be over so he can return to celebrating.
As a child, Eddie feels so far removed from death that even in its presence, he doesn’t feel the reality of it. To children, death isn’t something that will ever happen to them—time, to them, seems endless. Though more understandable because he is a child, Eddie’s focus on the “unfairness” of the Blue Man’s funeral highlights how self-absorbed humans are even in the presence of the loss or suffering of others.
Themes
