The Arrival by Shaun Tan

Reading "The arrival" by Shaun Tan was really refreshing; I hadn’t read that many comics with no dialogue but with this one I didn't really notice there was no dialogue until I was a little further ahead in the story. I felt very invested in the story and could easily relate to some of the themes of migration and foreign customs. I was born and raised in Puerto Rico with English being my second language, coming to the United States for the first time when I was a freshman at Ringling was something very scary for me. I had no family or friends in the U.S. that I could fall back on whenever I felt too homesick. It was just me. “The arrival” really demonstrated how this feels in the story with having the environment be drastically different than the former. The main character had to adjust to his new surroundings, which resembled nothing he had already been used in his home country. Creating this tone of uncertainty, reminiscing on old times in hopes of founding something better. I really liked the illustrations; they had very simple but stunning graphite renderings and there was also a lot of symbolism enveloped in the story, alluding to some kind of horrific force that may have driven the protagonist to migrate to his new home. It was a great read and I definitely recommend to anyone who has gone through any type of hardship in encountering something new or moving to a new and different place.