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Shaun Tan The Arrival Analysis

1592 Words7 Pages

Comprehension: A World Beyond Words
A Reflection on The Arrival by Shaun Tan In a world dominated by communication and the mass influx of emails, texts, memos, and talking received daily, it is hard to imagine a world without words. It is even more difficult to think about how one would even begin to understand others without the written language, but The Arrival by Shaun Tan is a surprising contradiction to that very idea. Tan beautifully crafts a completely new, yet oddly comforting, world in the monochromatic pictures of The Arrival. The story follows a man making his way to a new place before sending for his family. The reader witnesses his confusion, fear, excitement and learning in the pages without a single letter of text. One might …show more content…

Text structure, a phrase applied loosely for an entirely graphic book, is a subunit of text features. Lapp and Fisher’s Essential Readings on Comprehension states that a process for comprehension requires the reader to “recognize and know how to use any text features (text structure, illustrations, graphs, etc.) to support and enhance meaning construction” (2). The pictures are an obvious piece of the puzzle to understand the plot of The Arrival, but more unnoticed is the variety in size of the panels. A quick flip through the book reveals that panel sizes vary from full two-page spreads to up to thirty individual pictures on a page. I extrapolated that many panels are indicative of the passing of time, like when the main character was on the boat or working in the factory. Showing time passing, without the use of classic titles of months or seasons, is important to the development of the character because it shows he had to be patient for his family to journey to the new land. The joy of the reunion would be lost without the reader understanding that man waited over a year, possibly more, for his family. The opposite meaning is constructed from the full panels. The large panels were often striking scenes of the city, the hills or the fields. The size and detail reflected an extended moment for the character gazing on the landscape and soaking it in. I found myself also captivated by the picture and empathizing with the man in awestruck wonder of the new land he was it. While the short panels helped construct time, the large panels showed the setting. Both are necessary for the complete story of the traveler. Often length is unconscious observation in reading that helps readers decide which information is pertinent and may connect to other

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