The Arrival

Honestly, reading The Arrival I was a little lost. I had to go back and reread it before I really understood it. That could just be a me thing, but I think the lack of words does add some degree of confusion. It’s still a beautiful story and a beautiful comic, and I do think the lack of words was the correct artistic choice for the story. But telling a story without any words is incredibly difficult. It leaves a lot for the reader to interpret. Shaun Tan does it incredibly well, though. His images are clear and the sequence he places them in allows the reader to jump from panel to panel with ease. Truly the lack of words only strengthens this piece. It puts the reader in the shoes of the protagonist. This man who is confused by his foreign surroundings is much like the reader who is thrown into his story without the guidance of words. Although some of us may stumble a bit in trying to understand the story, ultimately Tan is successful in conveying the narrative only with images. So how does that work? I think there's a lot that goes into doing this successfully. For one thing, Tan creates panels that don't leave much in-between them. In comics there is always a jump between one panel to another, which the reader has to fill in for themselves. With written comics it is perhaps easier to jump a bit further ahead in time from one panel to the next with little to no confusion. However, when you do not have words to assist you it seems best to make smaller jumps in time. I noticed while reading that Tan does this a lot. Often there will be a series of panels that are similar except for some minute changes. I think these subtle shifts in his visuals makes the story a lot easier to follow. There's a lot of other factors too. Like what he decides to put in each panel, the body language of the characters, and the clarity of his images.