The Arrival was a
pleasant read and stood out against various other graphic novels, one main
reason being that it was completely wordless. Rather than make the storyline
confusing, however, the lack of words actually enhanced the novel’s narrative. The Arrival was well-paced, rich in both
cast and background, and open to various interpretations. Another nice perk about wordless comics is
that there is no language barrier to block anyone from reading it. Just about
anyone in the world can understand what is going on precisely because there are
no words to dictate the actions in the book.
One thing that particularly stood out
about The Arrival was that many of
the pictures blended in together so seamlessly it was almost like looking at a
film reel, or at a storyboard. One page in particular was dedicated solely to a
man throwing bottles into a pipe, and another focused on the motions of hands
tying a parcel. Sequences as such greatly added to the storytelling and
contrasted nicely against the larger pictures that took up entire pages. In
most graphic novels, such detail and the intricacy required to draw out every
single action would be deemed unnecessary because the dialogue tends to fill
the readers in. Without any text, the readers were able to come up with their
own interpretations of different scenes.
Another enjoyable aspect of the book was
the larger pictures in the book which served as juxtaposition against the
small, detailed scene-by-scene drawings. The monsters in the book were also a
nice touch and served as physical representations of the family’s feelings upon
moving to a new location. In several pages, the monsters were portrayed as
leviathans looming over the city, symbolizing their fear and anxiety in a new
place. On the other hand, the little cartoonish monster that accompanied the
father around seemed to symbolize hope and companionship, especially when it
develops a friendship with another family’s monster. These metaphorical
monsters were a good way of filling in what words would; they served as visual
guides to the feelings of the family in lieu of actual words.
The Arrival is truly
a good example of what a wordless comic should be like. The lack of words allowed
the graphic novel to be abstract in a way that wouldn’t have been possible had
there been words narrating what was going on throughout.
