Eddie\'s Life in the Context

Eddie's Life in the Context of Human Development: Analysis of "The five people you meet in heaven" by Mitch Albom

Mitch Albom, author of the book "The five people you meet in heaven," effectively illustrates the stages in life that people go through as they reach past the prime of their lives. Using the real-life character of Eddie, Albom details his life, and the event surrounding the last 50 minutes he would spend on earth. And as he faces death in "heaven," Eddie confronts realities and truths that he had never before realized, nor think about, in his life.

Albom's depiction of Eddie's life provides readers with insights about late adulthood, and how he had "fared" in living his adult life in the context of late adult development. Applying theories and concepts concerning human development, this paper brings into lucidity the importance of "Five people" in studying adulthood and aging. More specifically, this discussion and analysis paper shall argue whether towards the end of his life, Eddie achieved self-actualization or not.

In discussing late adult development, it is important to define late adulthood, which applies in Eddie's case, in the study of psychology. Late adulthood is technically defines as the developmental period that begins in the sixties or seventies and lasts until death. This stage is characterized by a decrease in health and strength and life's activities include life review, retirement, and adjustment to new social roles, among others.

Looking into the life of Eddie, who celebrates his 83rd birthday at the time of his death, his life deviates from the normative late adult development. Eddie, at 83, had indeed shown signs of decreasing strength and health, needing the support of a cane in order to stabilize himself and walking and conducting his work (which is physically demanding) with difficulty. What makes Eddie's life deviate from the normative concept of late adulthood is that at his age, he did not have the time for life review, much less to retire from his work. What he attains, in fact, is adopting his changing social roles in life, as he shifted his role from being a soldier of war to being head maintenance employee of an amusement park at Ruby Pier.

Thus, at the time of Eddie's death, he had failed to fit the image of an adult who has achieved self-realization, by reviewing his life upon retirement. Remarkable in Eddie's character is that he does not display a need to converse or talk excessively among other people, but managed to maintain a respectful and polite relationship with the park's patrons. Albom illustrates this point in the novel:

Customers knew Eddie. At least the regular ones did. They saw him summer after summer, one of those faces you associate with a place...Children liked Eddie. Not teenagers. Teenagers gave him headaches. Over the years, Eddie figured he'd seen every sort of do-nothing, snarl-at-you teenager there was. But children were different. Children looked at Eddie -- who, with his protruding lower jaw, always seemed to be grinning, like a dolphin -- and they trusted him...Eddie mostly grunted, never saying much. He figured it was because he didn't say much that they liked him.

This passage from the novel, if applied in Erik Erikson's stages of socioemotional development, shows that Eddie has the characteristics of an individual who had deviated from late adult development. Erikson's theory illustrates that each stage of socioemotional development represents a developmental task or crisis that must be negotiated. These crises can be, according to Erikson, a turning point of increased vulnerability or enhanced potential.

Among these stages of socioemotional development, the dichotomy of integrity vs. despair is most applicable to Eddie's case, which is the eighth and final stage, wherein individuals experience from the sixties on (late adulthood). At this stage, people review their lives, and assess among themselves whether they had a well-spent life, and if the assessment is positive, they have achieved integrity; otherwise, despair in life emerges. What Erikson would like to elucidate in his theory is that human development should assume a positive attitude towards life.

However, the passage in the novel discussed earlier in the analysis shows that Eddie has a low regard for himself. That, even though he has attained the wisdom that comes with old age, he was not able to fully realize his achievements in life and consider himself as an individual who had done something meaningful not only for the lives of others, but for his own personal development as well. As Albom illustrates in the novel, Eddie's death is but a prelude to his embarking a true late adult life -- that is, his death symbolizes the beginning of his 'retirement' from working as maintenance head of the park, allowing him more time to review his life as he had accomplished it on earth.

Upon his retirement, Eddie goes back to memories of his life on earth: how, in each event and endeavor he considers as trivial or part of the mundane, lies the truth that he has done something important for other people. His work as maintenance head, Eddie realizes, is not just a mere job of checking the machinery, nut, bolts, cables, in order to ensure that the park's rides are functioning and safe for the passengers to ride on. Most importantly, as Albom tells his readers, Eddie has become significant for all the people in the park "... because of the simple, mundane things Eddie had done in his life, the accidents he had prevented, the rides he had kept safe, the unnoticed turns he had affected every day..." This reflection on Eddie's part is already part of his life review, an appreciation of the things he have done while living on earth, and how, through deep reflection of his life, he was able to achieve integrity to replace the despair that he feels in life.

As he pursues the path towards self-realization and integrity (also synonymous with the concept of self-actualization), Eddie encounters five people who have significant "ties" with his life while on earth. Among these people, those who have the most pivotal effect on Eddie's life are the first and last persons he meet in "heaven": the Blue Man and the young girl whom he died with on the same accident (Eddie often refers to her as either "Amy or Annie").

The Blue Man became the key to Eddie's path towards self-realization. The blatant honesty and candor of the Blue Man as he explains the facts and realities in Eddie's life on earth allowed the old man to accept that he indeed is a worthy individual in the world he had lived in. Blue Man personifies wisdom and goodness as he speaks the words that become the novel's main theme: "there are no random acts... we are all connected... you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind..." This passage is elucidated by Albom, who claims that "he secret of heaven: that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one." These words of wisdom in the novel allowed Eddie to work his way back in his life, starting from his youth to being an adult who, despite his simple life as part of the maintenance team of the park, he has achieved more than he thinks he had given to the world and its people.