Book study: The Arrival

The Arrival is a wordless picture book created by Shaun Tan. The book deals with the issues of immigration, families, building new lives and the cycle of migration. The end covers make a strong impact as they are filled with detailed portraits of people from all walks of life. The images are all about the same size as a passport photo. This gives me the impression that this story could be about any one of these characters portrait within the end papers (Fig 1).

Fig 1

The book is classed as a children's book although the story is primarily lead by an adult which is unusual as the main character is more commonly a child. The artist uses a mixture of spreads, some are almost storyboards, others single pages and some are double spreads. These techniques are used to control the pacing of the story. The storyboard type pages show actions and display more of the sequence of events whereas full pages give us a chance to slow down and take everything in as shown in (Fig 2). The artist very cleverly composes many of the items shown in the smaller images into the larger images giving us a sense of where things are in relation to each other.

Fig 2

Fig 2

The father is leaving as the town seems to have been taken over by a monster, this seems to be in a metaphorical sense as the tentacles or arms of the beast are all that are ever seen engulfing the town. There is a strong mixture of very realistic drawing and fantasy combined to create the world within the story. This allows the reader to have empathy as the understand the context but also allows the imagination to run with creatures and lands that have never been seen before. These fantasy type lands also add to how much empathy you have with the character as they seem just as new to you as the traveller who has just arrived. The artwork has just the right balance between reality and fantasy. 

The fantasy element works in such a way that no place can be identified, the language shown through writing on notes walls etc cannot be read, however each element may be unrecognisable but they all seem so familiar at the same time. These are evident in (Fig 3) as the city scene looks like a combination of a building from Florence, the water tanks of New York and simple block and shapes fantasy buildings combining to make one skyline. The newspaper boy is a familiar sight although the writing is not of any language we know but still retains some form of familiarity.

Fig 3

Fig 3

The story is unusual in that the main character does not always lead the story. As he meets others on his travels they explain how they have come to be in the same city as him. They usually show some form of terror or atrocity that they have escaped from prior to arriving in this city. These points are then lead by the person he has met. These sequences highlight that he is not alone, that in fact there are many others in similar situations. The artist also uses animals throughout the story in order to make the whole place similar to why we are used to, people having pets all kinds of varieties. However most seem quiet ambiguous therefore allowing the reader to project their own pets onto the ones within the book. This again creates more empathy with the reader being able to imagine the characters troubles, the places, people and creatures he meets may all seem slightly different to each reader.

This is what I believe is the most successful aspect of this picture book - it has no boundaries. The book can be read and enjoyed by anyone of any age. Each person will envisage difference cities they see within the book, each will imagine or remember different people and each will place their own versions of pets or animals they believe are being portrait. The art style is perfect for this story, the images look like really old photos which gives it a very personal touch. Sometimes it seems as though you are looking through someones diary but in pictures rather than words. The style and balance between reality and fiction give it a somewhat timeless feel. No date can be placed on the images, no place can be named and I imagine someone picking this up in 100 years time may feel exactly the same as me although their own version of the story or what they relate it to will differ from my own thoughts.

The main aspect that I take from this book is in considering how I could find such a balance of reality/fantasy, how I might use metaphors and also what is the story I want to tell. This book took the artist four years to produce so I have no intentions of trying to create such an comprehensive piece of work but this is something I should aim for once I have developed me skills and knowledge enough to allow me to create such masterpieces.