1st Assignment: Shaun Tan's, The Arrival

Shaun Tan's, The Arrival, is a wordless comic that conveys its story through multiple pictures that show a story scene by scene, moment by moment. It achieves this by showing the small changes frame by frame making a slow transition. This is an effective was of telling a story through pictures using no words. The reader can follow along because of the pacing of the pictures its like watching a movie every few frames. In the first scene you see a photo being wrapped into a cloth and put in a suitcase, this takes about 10 frames. There are no words needed to convey the emotions in that scene or to say what’s happening.  The next scene the man with the suitcase’s daughter wakes up, it shows her eating and them getting ready to leave. Outside there are shadows of large tails on the building, showing maybe they don’t live in a good place. In the last frame of the scene it just shows the mother in the daughter in the city with the shadow tails, it is clear the man has left. In the next scene the man is sitting on a boat looking at the picture of his family he packed, you don’t need words to understand he misses him and he probably left to help them. In the next scene it shows many different pictures of clouds to show the passing of time, again you don’t need words to understand this. Over the rest of the comic you learn this man is an immigrant looking for a job, he finds a place to stay and meets people like himself who have also come from far away seeking a better life. In the end he gets a job and sends money back to his family and they come join him. Everything is shown very clearly though facial expressions and body language. Using expressions and body language is a good was to tell a visual story without the use of words.  Besides going slowly movement by movement with the body language that is how a story like The Arrival can be told without the use of words.