This week I read The Arrival illustrated by Shaun Tan. This is a wordless graphic novel published in 2004.
When I read the story, I was first attracted by the drawing style. It is in a realistic style and I personally like realistic style drawing. Based on the drawing style, I thought it was a non-fiction story, especially there were ships, a suitcase, a photo, and other things that we usually see in real life. However, the story soon showed readers the fiction side of it, such as the little house that the man lived after he arrived at the new land, the cute creature which was always stayed with the man, the food that they ate and so on. This really surprised me a lot. I felt the artist wanted to reflect some kind of realistic situation but not in a straightforward way. Some people might get confused about the way that he used, but I enjoyed it. I believe this is one of the reasons that this comic is praised by many readers and awards.
It is pretty clear that the theme is about immigrants. When it comes to the topic of immigrants, people always discuss or present this topic from political views. What made me impressed was The Arrival is from humanity's view rather than political views. Sure the protagonist of the story did represent a group of people-the immigrants, but there is no indication of right or wrong for his (or their) decision(s), the artist didn't allude us to judge, concern or support the situation either from my point of view. He showed the whole thing from a human nature view to make readers feel it then created empathy between readers and the situation. I personally think the goal that how to inspire people to consider humanity or human nature is what great artists should focus on.
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