Week 1: Shaun Tan's The Arrival

I read Shaun Tan's The Arrival, and having read some of his other works (ones with words) and was really surprised at how different it was from things like The Red Tree or The Rabbits. The artwork in the other stories I've read have been geared more towards children/all ages and accompanied by simple text. 

The Arrival was definitely more serious than the aforementioned stories, and part of that is due to the lack of words and the effect it creates. The story reads more like a storyboard for animation, or a shot-by-shot breakdown of a scene in a film. The action is usually clear about what’s going on in the story, but without accompanying narration it can be a bit of puzzle to try and understand what Tan is trying to convey to the audience.

On the bright side of that, it requires the reader to spend more time with the illustrations, searching for meaning in the images rather than reading and understanding, then moving on to the next panel. I also found the scale of the “panels” to be useful in determining which was the most important information, and which were meant to be read more quickly, or at which speed the events were taking place. I also found his use of the slight color variation, (cold grays, warm grays, sepia) to describe emotions, time of day, and even past and present very clever and successful.

After reading his other stories like The Red Tree and The Rabbits, it was interesting to see him do something more sequential than large illustrations, with a more serious tone than The Lost Thing (another story of his that features paneling and text). The lack of words did not hinder the story and if anything just encourages a second read and a closer look at how you’re interpreting the information.

I enjoy wordless narratives from time to time but am usually worried about whether my interpretation of the story is the right one, or if the author’s intent was totally lost on me. But I think stories like these are meant to be up to the reader’s interpretation, which is pretty cool. It must be interesting as an author to hear what other people got out of the story.