Week one the Arrival

The Arrival by Shaun Tan is such an interesting mix of elements I never thought to combine. The tanned paper and style really is reminiscent of old art and photographs, but with a very modern twist in creature and landscape designs. I thought it was very clever to have the new place where the main character immigrated to look so strange and surreal. Like the normal world in so many ways, but with some things off and incomprehensible to anyone reading. It helped put me in the shoes of someone immigrating all alone. How strange must it actually be to be that isolated. Not simply moving to a new city, but one far away where you can not even communicate. Sure, I can read accounts from immigrants telling me how strange America is to them. Still- what they describe is normal to me. I think that does give me some disconnect. No matter how hard I try a picture of New York will never seem very strange and confusing to me. I have studied Ellis island a lot in the distant past, but I think this style of storytelling really helped me put myself in the character's shoes more than anything. I understood as much as him, saw as much as he did. Unlike with most historical stories I did not know beforehand if there would be any significant events or if something was inevitable. To be perfectly honest I was very confused about what exactly was happening for a lot of this comic. There were so many things that I could understand clearly that were then interrupted by some sequence that I could not grasp the meaning of, or relation to the main story.