A Story with no Words

The Arrival by Shaun Tan is a lengthy comic that tells an entire story about a father emigrating to a new place without the use of words. The graphic novel uses panels of small, medium and large sizes to take the reader through the story by displaying actions and emotions deliberately in each frame. The framing is done in a style closer to the thumbnails you might see from filmmaking ideation rather than classic comic book/ graphic novel style. Many pages feature full spreads of like illustrations that don’t change too much from one to the next; such as the spread of similar small cloud frames towards the beginning of the novel. The way Tan tells a story without using words is by capturing his character’s emotions and whatever is happening to them, frame- by – frame. By focusing on the happenings surrounding the characters that are important to the story line, he is able to provide a continuous visual story for the audience. What the audience does with what they see is up to them; there can be a little room for interpretation when no one is telling you exactly what you are seeing. Tan can influence it by focusing on the emotions of the characters, hoping to relay those emotions to the readers as well. With a novel like this, each frame so carefully and technically detailed, it is hard for the reader not to spend a minute on each frame, gauging what they are seeing and constructing the proper emotional response.

Lit. of Comics and the Graphic Narrative: Day One

Max Ernst Panel Translations:

Panel 1: The woman is imitating or dancing with the rooster.

Panel 2: A rooster man and a regular rooster stand over a sleeping/dead woman on a table.

Panel 3: Two rooster men interact over a presumably dead woman in an open casket in the ground. Another naked woman stands behind the two rooster men.

Panel 4: Two rooster men kneel on the ground next to a naked woman on a slate, in front of a naked woman on a table, and below a naked man standing high above the ground.

Panel 5: A rooster man cheers or stretches by the door of a bedroom that has the regular rooster standing on a messy bed with a woman sprawled on the ground in the blankets of the bed. Another rooster stands on the ground next to her.

Panel 6: A rooster man peers in on two woman dancing/posing in a room.

Panel 7: A rooster man sits at a table with two well dressed women, in what appears to be a theater. He holds a stick and one of the women looks distressed.

Panel 8: Two women in nightgowns hide against a wall, one with a goose behind it. A rooster man is at the door looking at a fallen lantern on the ground.