The Arrival

The Arrival:

I struggle to keep a studious mind on my writing for this book. Instantly I sat down at my computer and wanted to fill the page with everything awesome about this graphic novel? Comic book? Illustration series? What is this. What is The Arrival? I know because of its sequential ordering and panel-by-panel design that this is a story of some sort. I know there are characters and it seems that they are not just part of the scenery but that they serve some narrative purpose to me the viewer. What is this? Am I reading? Am I simply observing?

You can’t call The Arrival a book, or even tell someone that your reading, in the conventional use of the word read, but you should be able to. Why is the only piece I have seen like this? I think this form a communicating strictly through images could serve as big of purpose as traditional reading. I think this style could be used and accepted more then television or movies, which GIVE you all the information and don’t leave much for you imagination or free thought. This open-ended narrative not only is clear enough to get its own point across but it also kind of forces the “reader” to make conscious decisions. Should I give the main character his own voice in my head? Should I add in dialogue to what looks like their conversation? What are they saying what can this be foreshadowing? Everything about a wordless book is about inferences. It’s all about what the viewer MAY take from it not what they definitely do.

The Arrival to me was one of the first books that I would say let me go with a sense of accomplishment. They may sound weird because any book read or completed should come with it a sense of accomplishment but, Shaun Tan makes you kind of work for the book, search yourself for the story it might be trying to tell. I saw a lot of images that struck me as familiar yet distant in this work. I feel like it mimicked a lot of images of world wars one and two and lot of the imagery from the Holocaust. A lot of that might have to do with the brownish vintage ton set over everything and the vignette that the different surfaces and lighting create.

I’m inspired to do series with the same visual styling at The Arrival. It’s going to be about sound and have the same visual style and motif, using a combination of acrylic and photography. This wordless narrative idea makes me think a lot about the idea of synesthesia and how the best way to describe what it is to experience it or see it happening. Language tends to complicate and distort a lot of issues. I have had a really big issue wit hit for a long time. I think we are the under evolved species cursed to still communicate in this way. So to make a successful piece about something so linguistically complicated should have a dramatic impact, like the one The Arrival had on me.