Review of THE ARRIVAL – Shaun Tan

I think that The Arrival by Shaun Tan is an excellent example of the wordless narrative.  First of all, the subject matter was really clear and relatable making its application to this genre still a difficult task but more manageable. Think about it. Immigration is such a topic not built mainly on words but on the feeling and emotion of being engulfed in an unfamiliar world and culture. I feel like it adds another level of interest that he also experienced this process of moving from familiar surroundings to that of the unknown.  

Shaun Tan's sensitivity to gesture, human psychology and his understanding of how we communicate ideas and concepts to one another across multiple mediums were really subtle emotional elements that aided the story. As I read through the book, I noticed that there are numerous scenes where the main character has to interact with people who were totally foreign to him and the only hint of the subject matter of the dialogue that the main character gives the viewer is maybe a diagram or two drawn by him. Most of the other information we only get through expressions on the face or the way or in what direction a hand is gesturing. There are other hints given to thus, but those have to do design choices, which we will discuss next. This powerful understanding of human interaction could have only been achieved this successfully through personal experience.

Other elements that really influenced and strengthened the visual readability of this story are the design choices that were made from style to eye movement created by the compositional staging of each frame. For example, the decision to exaggerate the grandeur of this strange land by really pushing the fantastical quality of architecture but still keeping the basic characteristics and concepts of the classes of people and where they fit into that society was very strong. Also, the way that Tan moved our eye through each frame was incredible and how he only seemed to give the viewer just enough information to propel the story enough to the next panel was a genius move. And I don't want to fail to mention one mechanism that Tan used so well—compression and extension of time. This was especially evident when the father was looking for a job. The action of him traveling from one employer to another was compressed into a series of like three panels. The extension of time occurred when he was working the assembly line to show how tedious and monotonous that job was. These elements helped tell the story for me in a more convincing way not necessarily how it happened but in the time frame that we feel these actions occur.

Overall, I feel like the culmination of all of these elements in addition to the fact that it was based, in part; on his own immigration experience enhanced this story's clarity, readability, and success as a wordless graphic narrative.