Shaun Tan's 'The Arrival'

      The first few pages of The Arrival were a little tough for me to follow. Without any previous knowledge about this very different world and it's characters the intro was a little tough to understand but as the story went on it became easier to read and understand what was happening in the story and what the characters were going through. It gets to the point where Shaun Tan is working with so many panels and in such a sequential way that it almost becomes like watching a muted movie; there are words being said from person to person but we as the reader can't hear them. It is through characters actions and interactions we can still understand and follow what is happening very clearly.

      It's much easier to understand this kind of story telling after you're already immersed in it. After you get invested in the characters and their lives you stop noticing the lack of a physical narration and just start understanding peoples interactions and reactions to things, it's a very intimate way of storytelling. As the reader the lack of words makes you depend upon the illustrations for information about the story and with this kind of extra attention having to be placed upon characters, I believe it makes the reader become more invested in the story than a book with words does. When you read words you're forced to actually look at the words and sometimes this can make people pay more attention to the writing in a book than the illustrations that are actually meant to tell the story.