The Arrival - Using Pictures to Tell a Story

This story of The Arrival potrays importance towards a man that immigrates to a desirable new land for opportunity. This story takes place during the early 1900s; a time where imagery was more intriguing to audiences. It was also around the time of silent movies. I could definitely see this as a silent movie during this time where immigration was pretty common in our world. The illustrations are that good that they alone can tell a magnificent story. Throughout this story there are clean transitions from drawing to drawing that defines the littlest of details for his travels.







Each piece of imagery shows a lot of expressiveness in the strokes and emotion in the forms and the people. For the full illustrations with environments we get a sense of the space the man is in with the beautiful buildings, architecture and the boats. He uses atmospheric perspective which really shows the space we are in. Tan uses a bunch of different camera angles through the beautifully drawn imagery. He uses a lot of close-ups, medium shots, long shots, establishing shots, ariel shots and a couple deep focus shots. This story also focuses on depression, misery, sadness, peace and also happiness. One of the main symbols that stood out to me were the white birds. They symbolize peace and the birds show how this new land could be a peaceful place for the man to settle in.



This comic had a very deep story behind the immigrant which was very powerful way to portray it. My great-grandfather came to the US at the age of 16 from Italy. He didn't have that much money and came overseas on a boat by himself. He learned the American language by reading the paper. He made my grandfather work starting at a very early age. From the stories that have been told about my grandfather have been very inspirational to me as well as my family. So, this story made me think of the man as being my great-grandfather being transported overseas to America to look for opportunities not available in Italy.