It is not obvious, entering this wordless graphic novel, what the story is actually about. The title itself is so powerful and carries so much weight throughout the story. It is depicted in an imaginary world, and uses representative imagery to describe the journey of a man crossing over from one place to another. The panels are so cinematic. Each page is designed and paced like the story boards for a film. The small, squared panels, side by side, move my eye quickly through the page, as my eyes would move in unvarying or fast-moving scenarios in real life (ie. dialogue between two people, taking a vegetable and displaying the motions of chopping that vegetable, panel by panel). The splash pages and larger spreads take significantly longer to process and digest.
I love that about this story. With no words, I am able to visually piece together an entire journey, and as the story unfolds, I realize what it is actually about:
Immigration.
I am not originally from America, and though my transition from Lebanon to the U.S. was completely personal and different from the character in 'The Arrival's experience, I could relate on so many levels to the foreign imagery he encounters. I think the book was intended to empathize with both immigrants and inhabitants of any ambiguous country or place. For those transitioning into a new world, it is intended to show their struggles and to express a possible feeling of loneliness, alienation and confusion. For the inhabitants taking in a foreign immigrant, I think Tan's intention is to remind them of the compassion and acceptance they should have toward those people. The ambiguity of this world he depicts, and the lack of descriptive details and color helps the reader understand and possibly relate to both ends of immigration, the traveler and the receiver. It is so powerful and has greatly influenced the visual story telling in my own comics, with or without words.
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