Saturday, August 22, 2015

Week1: The Graphic Novel

The Arrival by Shaun Tan is a beautiful graphic novel. It is a perfect example of storytelling. it communicates everything entirely through visual symbols and gestures that anyone from any culture can relate to. It is about A man who leaves his wife and child in seeking better prospects in an unknown country. He eventually finds himself being exposed to whole new world foreign ideas.

I found it extremely fascinating trying to decipher the story that the artist was trying to tell, and understand the experience that the man had moving to the new country. I think telling this story in a graphic novel format was very smart. Choosing the graphic novel format related directly to subject matter and concepts found in the graphic novel. Reading this book I felt like I had a deeper connection with the main character. I had a similar experience, I was seeing things I have never seen before and I think this format added an extra layer to the storytelling. We truly understood his confusion and feeling of being out of place. A lot of it was up for interpretation



I truly enjoyed this reading because of the format, typically I have a hard time sympathizing with character in traditional readings because there is a disconnect, between the words and images. Being a visual learner I was able to understand his emotions a lot better.

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