The Arrival was drawn by Shaun Tan and the story is told through a series of images. It is about a man from a poor country moving to a well-developed country. By looking at the photos of his home, we can see that although they are living in a small house, they still feel happy. The main purpose of the man going to a better-developed country is to earn more money for his family. The man left his home to go to the new country by ship and he has travelled through the ocean for a long time before he finally arrives the country. In this new country, he does not know how to speak their language and he’s tried very hard to make them understand his reason for coming to their country. Finally, after a few years went by, he found a place to work and his family came to the country to stay with him.
The Arrival is a graphic novel that is told without words, using only images to express ideas. The man, who is the main character in the novel, left his wife and daughter, immigrated to a new country facing new culture.
In this picture, Shaun Tan has drawn the man and his wife’s facial expression in a very visualised manner. We can see both of them are feeling sadness at the thought of being apart. However, the wife is holding the man’s hand on the suitcase, which showed that she really didn’t want him to leave.
The huge storm and a small ship on the ocean, with dark colour in the picture are showing that the people who are in the ship are facing a large challenge to move to the new country.
As ‘The Arrival’ is a wordless novel full of images and it can express a diverse range of feelings to all people even if they can’t read English. They can still able understand the main idea that Shaun Tan is trying to express. Hence, I think this can be a very suitable novel for people who don’t understand English to read.
Commentary
This review uses complex connections, impersonal and formal manner, I am the expert who is informing my audience about the story. It is well organised by using paragraphs. The language used in this review included emotional words to express feelings such as sadness and happy. I also described two of the images by writing about the colours and what objects means in those themes. In my last paragraph I wrote about my reaction. For instance I wrote what the novel is like and what audiences are appropriate to read it. I also gave an evaluation and recommended people to read it. Throughout my review I used connectives such as ‘and’, ‘however’ to link my ideas. By using referring words ‘it’, ‘him’ I reduced repetition. I really like the way Shaun Tan express his ideas and feeling through out drawings. By using just images not including any words, this can makes more people like reading it due to many of them will not be pull off by not understanding the language words.