So this may not exactly be the most literary of blog posts, but it was something I found interesting as I was reading The Arrival. I totally get that the arrival is a depiction of life as an immigrant and how difficult it is to adapt to a seemingly different world. It dramatically depicts the struggle to adapt to a new culture and the process that many immigrants go through of going to the new country before the rest of their family. At the same time, I found myself losing that narrative a bit and being swept up into a bit of a sci-fi, fantasy, post-apocalyptic narrative. I think the panel that really did this for me was the one in which giant men are sucking people up into vacuums with spotlights honing in on the fleeing crowds (I forget which page this is). I think it was a combination of the perspective of the image as well as the vacuum hose and spotlight, but for whatever reason, this panel really reminded me of the film War of the Worlds. Specifically, it reminds me of the scene in which the giant alien tripods are collecting people. Ultimately, it was really cool to have these two readings side by side, and I often found myself switching back and forth between the two interpretations.
