56 pages • 1 hour read
Mitch AlbomThe Next Person You Meet in Heaven
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 10-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “Annie Makes a Mistake”
Three weeks after the Ruby Pier accident, Annie sits at home, bored and cut off from the world. She thinks about how her mother has treated her differently since the accident. Her mother has become increasingly miserable and isolated and has taken up smoking. There is a knock on the door and Annie goes to answer it. Several reporters are outside wanting to ask her about the accident. Annie’s mother appears and slams the door closed, then scolds Annie for answering the door. Annie apologizes profusely, and both she and her mother start crying. Annie doesn’t even remember what happened at Ruby Pier; all she knows is that the accident has changed her hand and her relationship with her mother forever.
Chapter 11 Summary: “The Next Eternity”
Annie is alone in an endless desert without her body. She feels the pain of the Ruby Pier accident in a hand that isn’t there. She crawls through the sand until she comes upon a pile of her own body parts; suddenly, a pack of dogs swarms the pile and begins tearing the pieces apart. The dogs run away, chewing as they go and beckoning Annie to follow them. She wills herself to stand on nonexistent legs and breaks into a run.
Chapter 12 Summary: “The Second Person Annie Meets in Heaven”
The narrator comments that humans often depict companionship at the end of life, whether that is through the presence of religious figures or loved ones. Annie, too, believes that an afterlife spent alone is “unimaginably grim” (71), so she follows the dogs. The emotions of her life play around her as a swirl of changing colors. She arrives at a place full of lawns and doors, and each dog sits at a different door. A woman approaching her nineties appears, and Annie guesses she must be the second person she’s meant to meet; however, Annie has no idea who the woman is. A car pulls up; suddenly, Annie is inside. The car has no driver; the elderly woman runs alongside it, keeping up pace. They arrive at an animal shelter and Annie recognizes it as the place she got her dog, Cleo. The elderly woman asks Annie what else she can remember, and Annie thinks back to living in a car and motel, then a trailer in Arizona with her mother after the divorce. Annie was not allowed to engage much in physical activity and was confined to reading books most of the time.
Eventually, Annie’s mother has their last names changed, and she isolates herself and her daughter more and more. Annie’s hand is weak, and it irritates her constantly. When she hears her mother upset, she can feel nothing but resentment. Annie starts sneaking out, which only makes her mother isolate her more; Annie desperately wants her old life back.
Then, one day, Annie’s mother takes her to an animal shelter to adopt a dog. Annie’s eyes catch one still recovering from surgery and with an Elizabethan collar around its neck, and she notices it is “wounded as [she is] wounded” (79). As Annie describes her memory, it seems to appear before her. On Cleo’s first day at home with Annie, she begs to eat freely without the collar. Annie frees the dog, and then shows the dog her own wound. The dog whimpers and licks Annie’s hand, empathizing with her. The elderly woman then shows Annie a scene from her own memory, in which her own beloved dog was shot by men who broke into her home. She explains to Annie that both humans and dogs have empathy, but for dogs it isn’t blocked by selfish pursuits.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Annie Makes a Mistake”
Eight months after the accident, Annie’s bandages are off, but her hand is still somewhat weak. Cleo, too, is free of her collar. Annie decides to take Cleo out and ride her bike to the schoolyard to observe the children there. Annie is deeply curious and envious of the children at school and decides to eavesdrop on a couple of girls applying lipstick to one another. In doing so, she leaves Cleo tied to a tree. While eavesdropping, Annie stumbles and falls on her injured hand, causing severe pain. She returns to find Cleo, but Cleo is gone. Annie searches for over an hour and then finally rides home in tears. She sees Cleo sitting on the front doorstep, waiting for her, and realizes she has found an unconditional love and loyalty in her dog.
Chapter 14 Summary: “The Second Lesson”
Suddenly it occurs to Annie that the woman before her is Cleo. Cleo explains that she chose a human form to communicate better and proves who she is by reminiscing about times that she and Annie had together. Next, Annie and Cleo are lifted into the clear sky by Annie’s childhood mattress. Cleo explains that Annie’s loneliness in her childhood had a purpose: It led her to choose Cleo from the shelter. The two got each other through many difficult nights afterward. Cleo helps Annie see that because they were together and needed one another, Annie was never truly alone, and indeed was always surrounded by a world teeming with life.
They return to the dogs waiting at the doors of houses, and Annie watches as countless sad people come home to their loving dogs. Frowns soon turn to smiles, and Cleo explains that this is her heaven: watching people reunite with their dogs. To her, this everyday occurrence is an example of the divine. Watching the love between the dogs and people, Annie begins thinking about Paulo again, wondering if she was able to save him. In that moment, Cleo transforms back into her canine form, and Annie’s body returns. Annie picks her up, feeling all of the emotions and memories of the past at once. It is a moment filled with pure joy, but it ends quickly as Annie once again finds herself alone in the desert.
Meanwhile, on Earth, Tolbert angrily makes his way to the balloon field. He finds four police cars when he arrives.
Chapters 10-14 Analysis
When Annie first arrives in the afterlife, everything is blue, as if Annie has been washed anew. As Annie progresses to the second version of heaven, the scenery around her changes to different shades, and so too do Annie’s emotions change: “The sky above her shifted again, from mustard to plum to forest green. These colors, and all the firmament’s colors since her arrival, reflected the emotions of her life on Earth, replaying as that life was replayed” (71). These dark shades reflect the unpleasant feelings that trapped Annie all throughout her life.
Annie’s childhood was one filled with turmoil, isolation, and a sense of constant failure. Annie was not allowed to enroll in school until the third grade, and after that was not allowed to socialize outside of school. She became resentful of her mother and developed an aversion to being alone. Until her death, Annie looks back on this period as one of pain, loneliness, and anger.
However, this second heaven teaches Annie about the purpose of suffering: in this case, pain and loneliness. The empty desert symbolizes the all-consuming isolation Annie felt during this period of her life, but Annie manages to break free of it. When she finds the dogs ripping apart her body, symbolizing her pain, she feels compelled from within to chase after them, despite having no legs. This shows that Annie was, and still is, able to overcome her hardships.
Chasing the dogs leads her to finding Cleo, who helps Annie see that her loneliness and the differences in her created by the accident were exactly what made Annie special. She takes Annie to the scene of the adoption, when Annie walked past many “perfect” dogs and stopped upon one who looked wounded and alone—like her. Annie understood Cleo upon meeting her, and likewise, Cleo “understood more than a dog should” (81). This represents interwoven connections; though Cleo is not human, she and Annie changed the trajectories of each other’s lives. In the afterlife, Cleo helps Annie see that together, neither of them was ever really alone: “The end of loneliness is when someone needs you” (92). The images that Annie sees of herself with Cleo as they grow and love one another starkly contrast with the brutality of the dogs who ripped Annie’s body apart.
Cleo’s heaven illustrates Death as a Part of the Life Cycle and Interwoven Connections like hers and Annie’s. She explains that Annie is meeting her in the spot where their heavens intersect. Cleo’s idea of a perfect afterlife is the reunion between dogs and their loving owners, representing the idea that pets and humans only temporarily say goodbye. Cleo tells Annie that “[n]o act done for someone else is ever wasted” (93), which is doubly significant for Annie. In the moment, it reassures Annie that donating her lung to Paulo was the right choice regardless of the outcome; later, it emphasizes how deeply Cleo values Annie’s rescue of her.
Lastly, this section acts as a precursor to Annie’s meeting with her mother. The secrets that Lorraine kept from Annie caused a hole to form in Annie, and at this time her body represents this. She has regained her arms and legs, but her middle remains hollow. She does not remember the events of Ruby Pier; however, Annie is aware that she is in the dark. This leads to Lorraine’s realization that it is finally time to tell Annie the full story in the next chapters.
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By Mitch Albom
