The Arrival Shaun Tan Analysis

“The Arrival,” by Shaun Tan, is a wordless novel that depicts the experience immigrants have when vacating their homes in different countries to start new in the United States. Readers can see that on the first page there is a collage of headshots from multiple people of different ethnicity and religion. The first image page of the wordless novel helps viewers get a clearer image of what the novel is about. In “The Arrival,” Shaun Tan depicts the hardships and enjoyment that immigrants experience when moving to a new country, since the piece was written in 2006, there seems to be more hardships than enjoyment when coming to the United States. Chapter one shows a business man leaving for a new start in a different country with his family.

Imagery is the illustration of the skeletons depicts how the United States military is now, people of different ethnicities banding together to fight and defend the country that they love. In chapter three there is a scene with three gargantuan men wearing hazmat suits and carrying handheld vacuum cleaners. They appear to be vacuuming people, and the look of fear on the civilian’s faces makes it apparent that their life is in danger. Tan uses symbolism in this illustration by displaying situations people are trying to flee from their home country. These men that are in the illustration can represent political corruption or chemical bombs that went off. Political corruption comes to mind when you see the vacuum cleaners they are using, when you think of politics, you think of people trying to convince you to follow their campaign. However, in some other countries communism forces you to follow their commands or else, which is why these men are vacuuming up civilians. War comes to mind when you see the hazmat suits, war always plays a role in immigration and reasons why people move. During the time of World War II people were fleeing countries overseas like Japan, because of chemical bombs and nuclear bomb