Ready to answer unanswered questions....

I remember that I have once posted some questions in this blog which were left unanswered. In this short passage, I was about to answer my own questions. The first and second questions I posted were how should I associate the novel “5 People You Meet in Heaven” by Mitch Albom to the life lead by secondary school students in Malaysian classrooms and is there any similarities found in Eddie’s life and our students’ life? I had seriously thought about these two questions and I believe I do have my personal set of answer at this moment.

In real life, I assume that every one of us possess a part of Eddie’s life whether in the aspect of experience, background, past, family or way of living our life. Each of us has a story to tell, a secret to hide, an issue to run from and a mystery to solve. In short, we are all alike in a way. For secondary school students, their lives will be inevitably confused as various things are happening to them physically and emotionally. Therefore, they will need some sort of guidance to make them know that they are not alone in facing life as there is someone else in this world who shares the same feeling or same story just like them. By introducing them to this novel, students will be able to travel together with Eddie in another dimension. They will get to understand that life is unavoidably full of hardships and obstacles but as long as we are ready to learn from our mistakes, ready to accept things and learn to forgive, we will be just fine.

As for the third question, why should we use this novel in the literature classroom or as an extensive reading material? Well, this novel can be considered as a mountain rich of knowledge if properly utilized for teaching purposes. First of all, it teaches readers ample of important values throughout life such as reflection, revelation and redemption which occur in every stages of life. It shows us the importance of the relationship between human beings and the unique inter-relatedness between us. Besides, the novel enlightens our young readers on the concept of heaven which is considered as an awkward issue to be discussed in our society. It opens rooms of imagination for readers as they are given the opportunity to visualize, imagine and mentally form a heaven of their own. This will intrigue their critical and creative thinking skills.