The Arrival By Shaun Tan

 

The Arrival By Shaun Tan was totally radical; it’s a very bizarre experience and I loved it. There is an obvious theme and message to the narrative that most people will understand on their first read through; even though there is no reading. The Arrival is a story completely absent of words but has no issue telling a very intricate narrative. It tells a story with sequential images showing a progression of events in mostly chronological order, there are non-linear elements when the protagonist meets an old solider and a flashback sequence is shown.

  The story is about a man that leaves his family to travel to a new foreign land in hopes of a better life for his family. The Arrival uses many strange symbols and images to make the viewer feel disconnected from normal environments. It uses the images to portray the foreign world as something else other than anything on this earth. I believe it’s to give any viewer the same experience, regardless of their country’s customs. It paints alien scenes in hopes of making the viewer understand what its like to be an immigrant in a truly foreign land. Technically there are words and a language in The Arrival, but its not any known language in our current world. Even the protagonist resorts to using images of what he wants, and even then he is shown alternatives to his choices further broadening his horizons. 

I had a very eye opening experience when reading The Arrival because although I am an immigrant I wasn’t the one that had to take the leap from comfort for a brand new world. This story really made me understand what my father must have felt when he left our homeland to come to America. My father came to this country very much like the protagonist of The Arrival, just the clothes to his back and what he could carry in some luggage.  I can only imagine the amount of determination he needed to go out and try to find a job in a place where he understood nothing about their language or customs.