One of first thing I thought of when I began looking through Shaun Tan’s The Arrival was Dr. Seuss. This mostly came from the fantastic designs of the creatures and Tan’s alternate industrial style, vividly expressed in The Lost Thing. This has the odd of affect of combining a sometimes whimsical artistic style with a much more grim subject matter.
This has an interesting way of recreating the immigrant experience in The Arrival. All of the fantastical beasts, structures, and strange symbols create the feeling of an alien and mystifying world that is difficult to decipher at first glance. Like the protagonist, we are put into a strange place. However, in some ways the new city is not entirely unfamiliar. Even if the shape of the specific objects is unfamiliar, they often still serve recognizable functions and one can guess their analog, such as the flying steam ship-like vehicles and real world blimps. The landscape is thus not completely incomprehensible. There’s a layer of familiarity that lets us read what we’re seeing while only making it seem all the stranger with the way it deviates from expectations.
