is230-808-2017 discussion

During the finale of this truly disheartening novel, Whaley conducts a plot twist from the perspective of Cabot in the page of 189. When Alma Ember, the ex-wife of Cabot, broke up with him, and went to her hometown where Cullen and Gabriel lived, Lily, Arkansas, to take revenge on Alma's current girlfriend, Cullen Witter. Alma Ember was dissatisfied by Cabot due to his constant blame on God and how he does the pessimistic wrongdoings of this very existence of mankind. Due to his episodes, she left, accepting the wrong with her engagement with Cabot. Cabot finds the address of Cullen Witter, and a boy finds him. This boy is not Cullen, yet Gabriel. This was happening 11 weeks before the current time. Cabot then captured and kidnapped him, and only released him nearly 3 months later.
A theory created by my conscience has a gut instinct that Cabot's friend, Benton Sage (the previous second narrator), was the cause of all the mishappening. To go one step further, it's his parent's fault for overestimating him. Benton Sage commited suicide due to the reluctance of his family, espicially his dad, due to the 'lack of effort' displayed through his journey, despite feeding the poor, homeless, and living like them too. This initiated the call of finality as he decided to go to college to isolate himself. He did this to conduct his next plan. In college, he influenced his jocky friend, Cabot, to focus more on his studies. He became more academically involved and passed college. Benton failed, and felt the failure of his loss, and took his loss with a blow to his body from jumping off the Bell Tower. This then resulted in Cabot finding his diary, finding the Book of Enoch (highly religious book) and becoming a highly religious person. One thing led to another, as he then went to his parent's home, to unexpectedly find Alma in the theatre. The break up could've been prevented if Benton didn't die, since though Cabot would still be academically focused, he wouldn't be religious. This led to an engagement, a pregnancy fail, and rambling of the pregnancy. This is yet another cause of the misery of Cullen Witter. The failed pregnancy test provoked Cabot to display a theaterical blame on God himself, forcing the break up. Without the fail, Cullen would still have his brother. The third cause came soon as Alma came to Lily, Arkansas, with Cabot tailing, and told Cabot the name of her current boyfriend. Cullen Witter. This could've been prevented and Cullen would've kept his brother for the past 3 months. The theory overall is indeed a rambling scene, though it's fairly proven and accurate by all means.

Whaley put alot of empathy into Gabriel to make the reader depressed at the news. He did this using the simple backgrounds around him. For example, by showing the flashbacks of Gabriel, and the memory of him constantly throughout the book, it shows a sense of important and emphasized loss. Also, the initiative action and changed behavior of the family does stir a sense of feeling. Cullen's mom reacts by first endulging herself in Gabriel's bedroom all day, then quits her job and stares at his old pictures. This is virtually a clichè move, which makes it an impact stronger than before. The father searches for his lost son doing hopeless things, showing the loss of hope. He uses the net to make a website that proved costly and worthless, then searched the whole state, and then placed missing pictures throughout. Cullen's impact to the scene proves the most empathetic, as he is a deadbeat with no emotion after the realization. He cries in private, but in public is a person who tries risky doings to prove himself. He was the ignored child in his family, the one with an ordinary feat, behind his musical, funny, brother. Though being shadowed, he wasn't relieved, but instead felt incomplete. He felt like he had so much to achieve before, but now life doesn't matter. This makes the reader try very hard not to bawl their eyes out. Lucas had a minor empathy effect, but one nevertheless. His relentless searching for unrelated crime scenes made him seem like a crazy person, due to the need of searching a missing piece, just like Cullen, but in a more frantic way.

"Where things come back" is a extremely mood switching novel that, just like the word, switches moods from start to end. What I mean is that in the first 150 pages, Cullen Witter seems to be a depressed kid who just lost his cousin Oslo. He doesn't seem to care about anything, and has and attitude towards everyone, as shown in page 23 in the convenience store Cullen works at. When the guy (forgot name) wanted to buy cigarettes, Cullen refused, saying that the guy was 17, even though he said he was 18. This attitude led Russell Quitman to call him rude names, but, being Cullen, he decided to not care. Also, he wants to be with a girl called Ada Taylor, who he is in a crush with, but the fact that Ada is dating Russell makes Cullen more depressed than he already was.

Later on in the book, the mood changes to a beacon of hope, as with Gabriel missing and his family getting more and more fragile, Cullen decides he has to care; otherwise his whole life will fall apart. He tries to call and text Ada but gets no response, and as he met her in the cafe, she said that they can't be together because of the situation with Russell and how he is in a wheelchair. Ada believes it is all her fault and she owes her support to Russell. Cullen soon gets over the conversation, and we learn that when Gabriel comes back from being missing, Cullen was in shock and realizes that even though life may sometimes not go as you wish, things will come back to your life.

One of the things that bothered me the most during this book was the death of Benton Sage. I dont blame Sage for his decision of ending his life, because to be fair, he was experiencing a very diffult time period. Of course he had better options apparent, but with everything going on, a fast option that seemed the most effecient at the very moment was suicide. What bothers me about this is that there is absolutley no one else to blame for Sage's death than his father. His father had extrememly high expectations for his son. Thats not a problem, in fact its great! I mean why would'nt you want your child to thrive and become a great success? However his father crossed the line and went beyond the limits to an extent where it was no longer reasonable. His expectations were so unbelivebly high to the point where you would believe his father was insane. He is capturing and locking away not only Bentons childhood, but his entire life. At fathers request, of course Benton would do whatever he could to fulfill his fathers wishes, because it is always a great desire to make those who care for you and sacraficed so much for you proud. But his father was never appreciative of what his son did, even when he went all the way and did things we would not expect a teen like him to actually do for the good of others. For example, the text states, "But at 18, Benton had failed to live up to his fathers standards again. He had traveled halfway around the world, slept on dirt floor and fed the poor and almost dead to only realie that he had still not impressed Mr. Sage." This demonstrates that although he sacrafices so much to do good for the world around him and meet high standards of responsibility and care for the society surrounding him, it wa never good enough for his dad. This is a disturbing thought because it is crazy to see how instead of leading Benton on, he only kept raising his standards, and still never took the time to consider the differences his son had made. Further into the book, we learn that it is because of this unappreciation that he believed that his work is useless, and he comes to belive that he is a worthless figures. He claimes that "god had misled him" and that "he is trying to help but the world would not let him." This would not have happened if his fathers approval and recognition for the things he had done.

A theme that I observed within the book was that isolation from your loved ones and society can only cause harm to your true figure and instincts. The text portrays this theme by showing numerous examples of how isolation had negatively impacted various characters. For example, Cabot is so shaken by the loss of his roommate and seperation from close friends for so long that soon enough he resorts to putting others through pain for his own "comfort" or pleasure. As revealed in the book, Cabot becomes insance torturing and putting others especially Gabriel in high levels of pressure. Cabot drives himself into insanity making himself feel crazy to th epoint where he needs to commit to crimminal activities basically to put himself in ease. Similarily, when Cabots marriage arrangment does not work out, he gives up on this idea of falling in love and now isolates himself from love itself. This drives him into loneliness as he now runs away from his only remaining friends, sees them kill themselves or tortures them as he becomes more and more insane. Furthermore, Cullen faces a loss of his dearest Oslo, and now isolates him from the good of the world (starts going into drugs) and avoids people in his life that try to help him out and provide nice, beneficial company. This causes the summer to turn into a miserable time, during which Cullen spends all his time searching for who he knows he would have absolutley no luck in finding, and all the hope was just in his head.

I did not like the book much at all, as the author constantly repeated the same exact order and the same exact thoughts over and over for the first few hundred pages. Everyone in our table pretty much agreed on this, and it was hard to read them. Starting from page 150 or so however, things got interesting- Benton Sage committed suicide because he thought he was a failure in life, Cabot marries Alma Ender, and we finally learn that Gabriel Witter is not dead, but instead was kidnapped by Cabot when he got divorced. He had thought that Gabriel was Cullen, but once he learned that wasn't true, he thought that Gabriel was an angel sent from God to fix all his problems. After a few weeks in captivity, Gabriel is finally sent back to Lily. A lot happened during around those 50 pages, compared to the other pages, from the pace of the book changing from extremely slow to a fast-paced novel. The only note-worthy thing that I thought would be worth mentioning in the 150 pages, is the fact that Cullen was a depressed boy in his hometown and didn't care about life, and his cousin had just died from an overdose.
The mood in Where Things Come back was obviously very negative and pessimistic, which was clear from the beginning. At first, Olso (Cullen's cousin) overdosed, Cullen has very depressing thoughts and shows a "I don't care" attitude, while Benton is on the verge of killing himself because he can't handle what his father thinks of him or what people tell him. Not to mention, Gabriel was missing. Cullen thinks that there is no point in life and that Lily is a place where he is raised and dies, and where you can't follow any dreams. Cullen also likes a girl called, Ada Taylor, but she is dating Russell Quitman who is dating Ada, making him more depressed. You can tell this was not the most positive book, but rather has a negative mood to it.