Week 1

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

In this graphic narrative, I feel as though the immigration-themed undertones came across very clearly. The first and last pages show a huge display of many different people, all who seem to be of different races or ethnicities. This is the first indicator that the story deals with immigration, because why else would that many different people be shown? If the story was not metaphorical and was instead about the life of one man leaving his home to go to a new, foreign world, it would seem senseless to show the faces of all of the different foreign people. The two pages that show said foreign people imply that this is not just the story of one person, but instead, the stories of numerous people, immigrants, and their experiences with traveling to distant lands in hope for a new life better than the one they left at home. 

The actual world that this story takes place in is also a huge indicator of the immigration theme. Despite the locations looking whimsical and impractical to reality, there are subtle details in the drawings that tie the world into real life. The setting that stuck out to me the most included tall skyscrapers that overlooked a body of water, and it was very clear that this was supposed to represent New York. Ellis Island served as a gateway and immigrant inspection station in New York Bay that immigrants had to go through in order to enter the United States. 

Also in the story, we see the struggles of the man as he tries to adjust to this new world. He is unfamiliar with the area and has to ask locals for help, he doesn’t really know the native language too well, he struggles with finding and keeping a job, and so on. These are all problems that many immigrants faced in reality. Later on in the story after his wife and daughter find him and move back in with him, the daughter is found teaching the new ways of this country she’s learned to other immigrants. 

All of these things directly reference early immigration, and are easy to relate with the basic struggles that many real immigrants had to face in history.