Week 1 - Wordless Comics

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The Arrival by Shaun Tan, is a wordless comic that tells a story just with images. Many comics use text to convey the story but Tan doesn't and it actually works. Through his use of surrealism in his illustrations, Tan is able to express the idea of immigration and displacement but also evoke emotions from the readers.

As the illustrations are the main focus of the comic, Tan puts in a lot of details to help the reader follow the story. For instance, each character gives off so much emotion and are rendered as real people which makes it easier for the reader to understand the story and connect to it. While growing up, we learn about how facial expression and body language can indicate how we feel in different situations. With that in mind, we are able to get a sense of what is happening in the story as the characters' expressions change throughout. The position of their arms, mouth, eyes, etc. change which each "scene" which help indicate what emotion it being portrayed or if the characters are having a conversation. The reader is able to come to a conclusion with the help of previous knowledge from real life scenarios and storytelling.

Another clever thing Tan does is split the illustrations into chapters and place them on the page to resemble filmic sequences. The placement of the illustrations help the reader understand that it is a story as they are placed one after the other. This makes the reader look at them and read them as a story.

The image style and placement of the illustrations, made it feel like I was looking at an old picture album my grandfather has. With that being said, I was able to really understand the story as my grandfather would tell me stories about the separation between India and Pakistan and how he was displaced from his home and some of our family and how they had to start over. Tan's story isn't exactly what my grandfather experienced but it showed the struggles of immigration and sacrifices people made which evoked a lot of emotion.


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