An Analysis Of Anthropology In 'Where Things Come Back'

“When I asked him about the meaning of life, Dr. Webb got very quiet and then told me that life has no one meaning, it only has whatever meaning each of us puts on our own life. I’ll tell you now that I still don’t know the meaning of mine.” (p. 227)

Anthropology, the comparative study of human societies, cultures and development, is often noted in the book Where Things Come Back with the different story lines of tragedy and lost hope including a missing little brother, an extinct bird and a misplaced missionary. There are four types of anthropology: sociocultural, biological/physical, archaeology and linguistics. For this book, the main focus is sociocultural anthropology, which examines social patterns with an interest in how people live

Much, if not all, of his optimism was lost when his younger brother Gabriel went missing. Here we can look more at sociocultural anthropology. Gabriel was a symbolic character representing lost hope to his family after being missing for more than ten weeks. We, as humans, depend on each other to create meaning; it is how we live. The event as a whole seems to be an extremely open-ended scenario since we only know as much as Cullen knows. At the end the different story lines come together and the book resolves with Gabriel walking back up to his house. The extent of detail after his return home is just that Cullen, the older brother, could not believe his eyes. The book makes a point into not going into details of reactions after his return. The emphasis was put on the fact that Gabriel came back and everything else that happened after was secondary. Gabriel’s endpoint, or telos, was ironically returning to Lily since it is where things come

Benton traveled to Ethiopia to be a missionary at a very young age because he saw it as his calling in life. When the mission field was not exactly how he planned it to be, he was told to return home by his pastor. A reason Benton was uncomfortable in the mission he was placed in was because of the difference in culture. The culture in Ethiopia for the mission field in the book was to evangelize door by door. Often times it was just to give something to whomever lived in that house. God was not always shared in the way Benton thought He would be. Because of the cultural differences, Benton felt he was not doing the work God desired for him. Returning home, he was practically disowned by his family. Their culture seemed to be involved in a very strict religion that believed firmly in