Response on The Arrival

I enjoyed the visual metaphors a lot while reading "The Arrival". The alienated environment vs the familiar character created amazing contrast and it brought up my own memory of moving to an environment with a completely different culture. When I transferred from a Chinese local school into an international school with all English environment, I perceived the foreign english words just like what is drawn in “The Arrival” - jagged lines and shapes that I cannot understand. The classroom in the english speaking school is also arranged in a different way than my Chinese local school. The aliened arrangement of the classroom strongly reminds me of the strange shape design of the architectures in "the arrival". The white pet that follows around the protagonist reminds me of the help and warmth I got from people around me, and the experience of making friends with people from another culture. Just like the protagonist, I slowly built my place within the new culture and got used to the "strange" environment.

In general, I like this graphic novel a lot. Not only that it resembles my own experience, but the realistic rendering style of the drawing really helps to create believability and contrast. The strong realism in the drawings creates a strong contrast with the absurd shapes of the the foreign environment, making the comic look like a surreal but believable world that is visually stunning. I found both the visual and narrative style very appealing and will be interested to explore more works of Shaun Tan.



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