Week 1: The Arrival Response

I didn’t really know what to expect when I was first introduced to the comic and I didn’t have any expectations either. However, The Arrival by Shaun Tan was a very beautiful and emotional graphic novel that had a lot of meaning behind it. Immediately just from the first page, I was drawn into it with so many different faces. The style and design of the graphic novel is something I was drawn to even more and it really gave me a place in time without even saying what time we were in as well.

Being a visual learner myself I think comics are very easy for me to understand a lot more rather than reading actual words. It's is something I really enjoyed about this comic, because I had so many emotions while reading this story. When this man left his family, I felt sad, when he was in this unknown environment trying to figure out what things said I felt anxious and nervous and when he met the man and his wife I was happy for him.

Something I thought was intriguing about the story was the flashback that occurred when he met the man at the market and he was talking about his experience with his wife. The style that they made the flashback with the black background instead of white to show that this is a different time and it’s a sad time. It’s something that I thought was an interesting addition to the story and it defiantly gave some type of character to the man he met and it was a good way to introduce his wife as well.

Overall I thought The Arrival was a great graphic narrative and it was really easy to understand the story and characters. There are different things that the author/artist did in this book to make the reader feel a certain way and I loved it. The drawings and style were beautiful along with the story