The Arrival: A Wordless Narrative

After reading Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, I was surprised to find that the reader doesn’t need any formal writings or explanations of the story as almost all of the story is told through a series of drawings. This comic is successful in intricately developing the story only through images by the use of chronological images that depict actions, memories, objects, locations, and pantomimed conversations. The viewer can infer quite a bit of information with contextualized clues hidden within certain objects and settings.

For example, at the beginning of the first act of the book, drawings of different objects are presented to the audience, and with these and the other drawings included, we as a viewer are given information based on these items and can gain a cumulative understanding of life being lived by a family, who is a very close but poor family, who may be intending to travel very soon.

Soon after, more drawings depict a man, who can be inferred as a father and husband through the images given, who is packing important belongings for a journey, and his family help see him off. The reader can also sense implied danger through what appears to be a surrealistic threat present as the family exit their home, as there are long barbed tales illustrated out in the streets, creating a looming and terrifying threat in the location presented that it can even be interpreted as real-life dangers that immigrants face in the real world.

Other wonderful examples of this comic expressing a story without words or spoken dialogue are the display of actions. In the second act of the book, the father and husband, who has now arrived on strange and even more fantastical shores of a foreign are confronted with the new world must now navigate, and all of his actions are illustrated so the audience can have a further understanding of the plot of the story.

The Arrival (Mini-Class Response)

I haven't read any of Shaun Tan's work before, although I had seen it in illustration context. I was very enamored by the invocation of a sentimental feeling in the story about missing family.