Where Things Come Back Analysis

Right away, our narrator—a.k.a. Cullen Witter—introduces us to the small town of Lily, Arkansas. Even though it's the place where Cullen was born and raised, he doesn't have very romantic not...

Where Things Come Back is a special book because it employs not one, but two narrative techniques. Fancy, right? When we get Cullen's side of the story, it's definitely told from his own persp...

Coming-of-Age; Family Drama Once you strip away all the drama of a missing brother, a dead cousin, and a woodpecker's reemergence from extinction, Where Things Come Back is just a story about...

Because much of the story is told from Cullen Witter's perspective, everything is rather bleak. Cullen tells the story like it is through his eyes… but his eyes are a little bit tainted by pe...

The writing style in Where Things Come Back is clear, concise, and descriptive, which is important when a book wants to capture the lives of so many characters. The writing is meant to introduce...

Where Things Come Back is the title of the entire book and the title of the last chapter—you know, the one in which Gabriel reappears after his long disappearance. On the surface, it seems like m...

The ending of Where Things Come Back seems quite abrupt when you think about how the entire novel has led up to the moment that Gabriel comes back. But instead of getting, say, a chapter's worth of...

It's not that the language in Where Things Come Back is particularly difficult to read; after all, this is a book in which our narrator is your typical seventeen-year-old boy from a small town. H...

Exposition The scene of the story is set by Cullen's cousin Oslo's death in the small town of Lily, Arkansas. The Witter family is rocked by this development, and everyone is feeling quite gl...

John Corey Whaley apparently used to write stories about aliens, underwater civilizations, and zombies when he was a kid… hmm, does that sound like a certain Cullen Witter to you? (Source)Ap...

Let's be real: When the narrator of your story happens to be a seventeen-year-old boy, there's bound to be some sexual references. Even though the act itself isn't described in graphic detail,...

Literary and Philosophical References The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger  The Book of Enoch Pop Culture References Sufjan Stevens