The Arrival

Shaun Tan has an excellent sense of visual storytelling and does a really fantastic job of telling a story with no words in The Arrival. A story of immigration and travelling is extremely universal, even for people who may have lived in the same place for the majority of their lives. I’m originally from Puerto Rico, but every time my family and Iwould visit the US, I would discover something new from the everyday American life. I found the food strange and exciting and the TV channels at the hotel rooms to be more engaging and fun. I really related with the character in The Arrival, because, like him, I was experiencing this strange new world with fresh eyes.

Although the idea of experiencing a new culture sounds very fun, it can also be very scary and frustrating. I really related to the page in the comic where he is trying to interact with an immigrations officer and he doesn’t understand what the other person is saying. A couple of years back, I got lost in Italy and had to speak Spanish to some Italian officers and hope that they picked up one or two words from my hysterical cries. Shaun Tan’s drawings felt so true and powerful to me that I physically reacted to the page I was looking at. I think that’s what makes his work so successful; his ability to present a universal topic in a very relatable way. Speaking more technically, The Arrival also had very clear drawings. The artist was a very good draftsman, and was able to communicate ideas clearly; as an audience member, I never had to detach myself from the story in order to analyze what the drawings meant.