The Arrival

A comic like The Arrival by Shaun Tan can successfully tell a story without the need of words as long as the illustration can convey the information needed. In the case of The Arrival, the entire story start finish tells the story of a man leaving his family and home to immigrate to a new city where he can find work so that he can save the money up to be able to bring his wife and child over to their new home. The story illustrates this in detail without words or subtexts, purely leaving the read to dissect the illustration to tell the story. It’s a very successful method used in children’s books. With the removal of words and subtext, the reader becomes involved and submerged into the world and in turn the story that the author is trying to depict for their audience. The absence of visual text creates this force that drawing in the reader to delve into the illustration to tray and extract any shred of information to add on to the story they are interpreting from the comic. The reader there for in being guided through the story by the author. The author would have to carefully craft the image so that the image tells the reader what they need to know when they need to know. It’s an easy way to get the reader to read and enjoy the story rather than getting distracted by the words.