Week One: The Arrival by Shaun Tan

I was shaking in my Gucci slippers upon being instructed to blog about a “wordless novel.” How do you even comment on novel made up of rigidly a series of images? Do you discuss the aesthetic of the artist’s work? Do you refer to the artist as an artist or a writer… or both? Do you share the intimate details of the story line you conjured up in your head while viewing the images? All I knew is that I needed to get creative (pun intended, I’m in art school, I’m always fucking creative).

Although a wordless comic, The Arrival by Shaun Tan, surprisingly moved me through the series of images as a story pretty swiftly. It seemed as if the series of images were from a past time of some sort, as they were washed out in color. I believe that this was an important characteristic of the wordless novel as it primarily set the tone without needing to “write it out.” It was now obvious to me that these series of images were specifically geared to encouraging the viewer to depict a story rather than just graze over images.

The images didn’t need words to tell its story. The series of similar but alternating views in the series of images were a big supporter in promising the flow of the story. I believe without this, it would not be a strong story, but rather strictly a series of images. The storyline is of course not as clear as the story line you would fine in a novel like The Fault in Our Stars. However, through the use of the plentiful images in each “scene,” it is clear the storyline revolves around a family that is broken up as a man (possibly a husband or father) leaves permanently for another city.