The Arrival

The Arrival does a great job of telling a story without using words. For starters, all the images are in a clear sequential order, like the most important snapshot frames of a film were taken out to show direction and context. To compare this to something familiar to my major, it’s the same rule to storyboarding. What we draw should be necessary to tell the story and should be drawn clearly to understand the image. Each image in The Arrival clearly shows what is going on in the narrative, for example, who the main character is and what his goals are. He is the character because we see in almost every panel and and we start and end with his goal. We see that he has a family and he leaves them to find a way to give them a better life as he searches for work in an unfamiliar land. One aspect of the story that may be considered a challenge is showing what new things are without explaining them in words. The world that The Arrival takes place in is nothing like our own, however the artist uses familiarity to things in our reality to compare with his world. For example, when the main character arrives to this new city. Through his emotions and body language we can decipher that he is unfamiliar with this city’s language. Another point is when he finds work putting up posters, but they are upside-down, unbeknownst to him until he is corrected by someone who understands the language. The strange creatures are portrayed as pets and seemingly that everyone has one, so when the main character gets one of his own, he treats it as such like a companion as that is what it is. Finally, when the main character speaks with others and they tell their stories, they are familiar stories of escaping bad situations and immigrating to this new city where they are free and happy. The story, though set in a strange alien world, is relatable by just showing us these familiar images and doing so in a clear and sequential manner. Reading it felt like watching a silent film.