Week #1

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

  Shaun Tan’s the Arrival is a wordless graphic novel which depicts a father and his family emigrating to a fantastical foreign land. Although it does not have any dialogue, the Arrival succeeds to tell a story and deliver the characters’ emotion with its beautiful combination of realistic style and fantasy. 

  Regarding the layout of the Arrival, it is noticeable that the novel has an unique composition using square panels aligned. This layout helps to keep the flow of panels, especially when multiple panels show the continuous motion of the characters. Similar to a storyboarding, many pages of the Arrival depict the movements in detail, such as hands, a character walking and talking, etc. This style is one of the reasons that the Arrival is able to tell a story without any dialogue since the readers can easily understand the movements in the story. Using different angles and points of view, the Arrival illustrates its beautiful world and characters without making the book monotonous. Also, a lot of full-page panels are inserted in the book. Those panels are all fine and detailed, and draw the readers into its imaginary world. 

  As for the art in the Arrival, its use of color significantly helps the story-telling. Although its whole story is illustrated with monochromatic drawings, the color scheme ranges from grayscale, sepia-tone to yellowish tone. This color scheme clarifies the mood of the scenes; the yellowish tone suggests a hope in the new land, and the grayscale shows the characters’ dismal feelings and experiences. Also, the lighting is another important factor in the art of the Arrival. In some panels, the contrast of light and shadow is evident and almost resembles Notan art. It makes the unique shapes of the imaginary world defined and brings out the charm of the drawings. 

  In addition to its beautiful art and style, the book itself creates the mood of the story. For example, its paper texture and stickers on the first few pages make the book look like a passport or a traveller’s notebook. As a result, this graphic novel succeeds to make the readers feel like as they are existing in the world of the Arrival.