Subtle Text in The Arrival

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.