Images With(In) Books

After the big jumble of text and image in “Asterios Polyp”, I found the organized layout and simple images of Tan’s “The Arrival” very refreshing. I loved the highly detailed and emotional illustrations. They were so intricate that the book really didn’t need words, and perhaps would not have the same sort of emotional impact if there were words to go along with those images.

Something about the illustration style reminded me of the illustrations in “The Polar Express” by Chris Van Allsburg. While “The Polar Express” still has words to go with the images, the careful composition and emotional impact of the illustrations were what really drew me to the book as a child. I wonder how “The Polar Express” would read if you only looked at the images and ignored the text.

It was also really interesting to watch Tan’s “The Lost Thing” in class. I enjoyed hearing the story rather than reading it while viewing the animation. However, I wonder how it would have worked with just the sound effects and no narration, sort of like “Walle” the movie. I enjoyed watching/hearing/reading/viewing all these different works, and am left curious about how the artist decides how their illustrations will interact with text.

I really liked the wordless-ness of The Arrival and how it conveys the perspective of an immigrant. When the man shows up in this crazy new world, he is on his own, unable to speak or understand the native language. The lack of text reflects the loneliness he experiences, a kind of silence he endures daily. It also conveys a sense of other-worldliness as we discussed in class. There are so many befuddling and fantastic sights, that this absorbs the man’s attention. On another level, the lack of text draws the reader’s full attention to the illustrations and the sequence of pictures, because these pictures are the sole carrier of the responsibility of telling the story.

It took me a second read-through of the arrival to realize that Shaun Tan actually ‘text’ throughout his novel. As our main character arrives in what we can presume to be New York City, we see that there is scripture written everywhere. It comes in the form of street signs, advertisement, maps, etc. What I find fascinating about this is that the scripture isn’t any ‘real’ language, but instead is suppose to put us in the main characters shoes by not giving us the privilege of being able to decipher text, just as the main character cannot. It also seems as if the text that Tan created in a mixture of all sorts of languages, furthering the narrative that NYC is a city of immigrants. I just find it a very cool, hidden feature of his novel. Although there is text in a ‘text-less’ book, the text cannot be deciphered and thus the book remains text-less to the reader.

The art style of Shaun Tan’s The Arrival is very interesting to me.  The book could be classified as a graphic narrative, yet its style is very unique to the genre. Each page is done in a way that makes it seem like it could be framed on a museum wall, rather than in the pages of a graphic novel. It really makes me think that Tan is intentionally manipulating the genre in a way to express his own ideas and messages. We saw a similar style in the short film he created, which I very much enjoyed.

I really like the Selznick blurb on The Awakening interpreting the fantasy elements as culture shock–that as the narrator arrives in a new country, the architecture, writing, and animals are so wildly unfamiliar that they seem fantastical. It captures the loneliness and confusion inherent in any immigration experience, and Shaun Tan’s narrative is compelling and absolutely gorgeous.

Obviously, however, it does slightly romanticize a painful and complicated narrative. Introducing a magical element to explain homesickness and culture shock vaguely hints at colonialism and assimilation in a harmful melting-pot sort of way. But it’s definitely an interesting take on immigration, and it absolutely captures the sheer unfamiliarity of moving to a foreign country.

I really liked this book because I think it accurately portrays several different aspects of the immigrant experience from a very personal, individualistic perspective. One of my favorite pages is the one that features the protagonist unpacking his suitcase in his new apartament. As he puts things away, he peers into the suitcase and sees his wife and daughter sitting in their kitchen. This is a metapicture, and I think it’s fitting to close out this course with themes we’ve discussed from the very beginning. As the reader watches him watch his family, they are reminded of the very essence of pictures and drawings: to create a scene or situation that speaks to us. Through all of the objects he unpacks (which we get in separate panels), a composite situation is created; home. Just like the book itself, a collection of images/things that creates an overall feeling or message, a suitcase is a collection of items that construct identity and place.

A suitcase may be a picture book of character, of life, of location. Assembled together, all of its elements hint at a life, a story. All of our possessions serve to create a narrative of where we’ve been and who we are.

One of the most interesting features of having a wordless graphic novel and narrative is that it is also noiseless.  The way that Shaun Tan depicted noises was extremely well done in my opinion.  For example, the father’s conversations during the ID-ing process at the beginning show him with an open mouth and grand gesticulations that perfectly convey how he is feeling.  You can almost hear his exasperated voice intonations as he motions to the interviwer.  Another example of noise depiction is once he arrives in the new place in chapter two.  He is searching for something and is reading a book to try to figure something out.  While he is reading, you see him turn around and look up, but you don’t know what drew his attention.  The next panel has a man reaching out to him and apparently speaking to him.  When reviewing this row of panels, the reader can now see that there was a noise or yell, or maybe even just a kind hello, that drew the father’s attention from the book.  We the readers will never know what the noise is exactly, but Tan definitely articulates it without feeling that words are necessary.

I liked the emphasis on identity in The Arrival. Issues that immigrants face settling in a new country and communicating with people from different backgrounds are all challenges to one’s national and personal identity. There are multiple profiles of people from diverse ethnicities at the beginning and end of the book in order to provoke thinking about identity. Also, there are multiple profile-like pictures of the protagonist on his own in different moments, with different facial expressions, all of which in my opinion are for the purpose of establishing sympathy with the protagonist and provoking viewers to relate to his ordeals.

I find the large panels as useful and insightful as the small ones, for each size its own purpose: the large ones feature the scenes of the city or the station to introduce viewers to the place where the protagonist just arrived, and the small ones, or some of them, are like “close-ups” of moments in which viewers need are urged to study the scene meticulously.

The Arrival comments on a very well debated theme today, immigration. A common reason people migrate from one country to another is to seek refuge or a better life. I know my parents did a similar thing. They have told how out of place and uncomfortable they felt when they first arrived. I like author’s portrayal of the characters uneasiness when trying to figure out how to get somewhere. I do have a question though. I noticed that each foreign person had one of this white creatures with them. Each were different for each person. Is there a reason why the man has a dog-like creature while the lady, who helped him with his ticket, had a cat-like creature. If a creature was given to each new family that arrived, then how many unknown things are there.

I think that the creatures are there to help the new people adjust to the place. Even though they my comforting to the immigrants, one has to think how they affect the natives. Could the author be commenting on the new things that come with immigration. I honestly do not know. What do you think these creature represent? I think that represent the unknown.

During class this week, I couldn’t help but think of the significance of Ellis Island in a lot of our lives. Personally, my grandparents went through Ellis Island at a very young age. This book speaks to me in a way that helps me envision how my grandparents must have felt upon entering America. My grandfather was a linen trader in Ireland before entering the United States, reading through his memos, its clear his thoughts were very similar to the images displayed throughout this book. For me it is relatable because his memo’s are in fragments, almost as still images at points in his arrival, similar to the still images we see throughout the text. The images we see of New York City in the text reflect his memo’s as memorizing and grand, as he came from a rural background in Belfast, Ireland. Overall, I just find this text interesting because it helps me connect to my past, and I relate the text very closely to how I see my grandfather when he entered the United States for the first time as an immigrant.