For this, my first blog entry, I will be discussing my personal review of the silent graphic novel of "The Arrival" by Shaun Tan. Now I can tell right off the bat that you, (the reader(s)) are wondering why I chose to personally call this a "silent" graphic novel. Before I begin the brief and in depth review of this novel, I will explain my choice in added words. Simply put, the word "silent" (in this blogger's opinion) is used to describe a book hat tells a story simply through imagery and with the use of absent text such as description, location and even word and thought text. This graphic novel tells a story through the power of visual art. In this novel's case, illustrations.

Right then; back to the importance that is the review! Based on the type of colorizing of the paper and how aged it appears and how the images are well sketched (in what appears to be some sort of charcoal) it is obvious that the author is trying to depict a historic emotion to this novel and the many stories the reader will find within it. As I looked through the pages and began to take in the breathtaking view I started to put everything together that this novel was a wildly surreal utopian past modernist representation of the stories and emotional journey's of foreigners who had to make the life changing decision of immigrating to a new for hopes to obtaining a better life for themselves and their families. The reader will mainly follow the story of one immigrant in particular who appears to be on a mission to find his lost female companion. Now weather this woman is his younger sister or his wife or even his cousin, that I believe is open to interpretation. Along the way, the author provides us with a little more insight on the struggle of immigration as we are shown different side story backgrounds of helpful characters our protagonist encounters along the way of his own journey and provides more knowledge of emotional struggles and hardships other immigrants had to endure and overcome while making a new home for themselves.