Week 1: The Graphic Narrative

The medium of graphic novels has allowed artists and writers a means to experiment different ways to communicate a story, only by artwork. By providing only visual information, the reader has to imagine what dialogue, music, and sounds took place. This makes each panel’s information vital to the story, as it becomes the dialogue. Shaun Tan’s The Arrival is a highly coveted wordless graphic novel. Tan’s elaborate graphite illustrations alone have garnered many fans for this book. 

The Arrival’s overall appearance is like that of aging photographs discovered in a dusty box, stuffed away for years in the attic. Pairing that with how little time it takes to read a graphic novel asserts the theme of this story acting as a fleeting memory. The reader can examine the protagonist’s story and can even relate to him, but The Arrival’s format cannot allow him to become an extension of the reader – his story appears to have already passed, and the reader is scanning over photos of his life. The land he relocates to, however, is deeply immersive, despite the book's small size. This results from the storyline following the first time the protagonist reached this place, adapting to each aspect of its culture - the viewer is doing the very same.