The Arrival

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The Arrival by Shaun Tan is a really interesting and visually beautiful silent graphic novel. It takes us with the main character’s (the father) adventure in to a new world, where everything is magical and different. The language is different, words are different and it even has strange creatures that we had never seen before. The whole story was done with illustration only; there are no dialogs or words to describe the story. 

Because there are no words and dialogs, it actually makes the reader feel more personal to each character’s emotion, and the situation that the main character is in. As we are put on the same page as the main character we can totally feel more connect to him, because we are learning this new world while he is doing the same. The use of body language and facial motion really show off the creator’s attention to detail and to human gesture. There are also some funny moments there when the main character is trying really hard to ask a simple question, and that really make me relate to myself when I first arrive to America. 

Almost everyone has a strange creature as their companion, they all look animal like, some are big some looks like papers. I really like this idea because it makes me think about many other film, book or video game that put the character on the same position. The character is in a strange world, and there is his trustful companion, sidekick or a soccer ball with a face like in Cast Away. The introduction of this companion allow the writer/creator to show some really in depth personal feeling that the main character won’t normally show, and therefore brings the reader closer and care more about the main character.

This whole companion thing reminds me the game of Portal. In the game Portal, the game puts the player in a strange experimental lab where the whole point of the lab is to kill the player. Player will later get a “Companion Cube” which is basically a metal cube and allows the player to solve puzzle and therefore survive in the lab. As the game progress the player will emotionally grow a relationship with the only thing in the game that’s not trying to kill him, and therefore become its friend. When the metal cube was destroyed later on in the game, most of the players actually feel sad and lost just like Tom Hanks did when that soccer ball died.