Summary
A graphic novel told entirely through pictures, The Arrival opens with sepia-tinted black-and-white illustrations of objects in small squares. There is a folded-paper bird, a clock, a fedora on a hook, a pot, a family portrait drawn by a child, a teapot, a trunk, a coffee cup next to pamphlets bearing the image of a ship, and a family portrait of the story’s protagonist with his wife and daughter.
The man takes the framed portrait, wraps it carefully in cloth and string, and tucks it among the possessions in his travel trunk. He places his hand over the trunk. His wife places her hand over his. In a page-large image, the man and wife stand over the trunk with their hands touching. The objects in the small square images from the first page are revealed to be around them in the kitchen. The man’s daughter wakes up with a yawn.
While eating breakfast, she sees his packed trunk. The family dresses, the man in his fedora, the woman in a scarf tied over her hair, and the little girl in a woolen hat. Outside, they walk together down a featureless urban street. Above and behind them is the imposing shadow of a long spiked tentacle-like presence. From a wider perspective, Tan reveals that these black tentacles are rising on every street in the neighborhood. The section ends with an image of the woman and her daughter holding hands. They look toward the empty street before them. The man is gone.
In Part II, the man sets the framed photo portrait of his family on his trunk and looks at it while eating a bowl of soup. He then looks out the round porthole window of the steamer that is taking him across the ocean. His window is one among countless others, illuminated as the ship sails into the dark night. The next page is full of thumbnail images of different cloud formations, presumably viewed by the many people huddled on board the ship.
Out on the deck with everyone else, the man sits on his trunk and writes something on a piece of paper in his notebook. He tears out the page and folds it into the shape of a bird. He holds it before him and scrutinizes his work with narrowed eyes. He then looks to the sky, shielding his eyes from the sun, and sees a group of strange flying creatures. They look like a cross between fish and dragonflies. People on the ship point to the creatures, presumably never having seen such animals before.
The ship approaches the bustling shore of the place the passengers are immigrating to. A large statue stands imposingly over the water. It is much taller than the skyscraper buildings in the background and shows two people shaking hands. They each have small animals perched on their shoulders. One wears a round, flat-topped hat, the other a pointed hat. The objects at their feet, collected in small boats, suggest they are convening across cultures.
The ship docks and the passengers step off. They crowd together in line to be processed in one large room full of banners displaying an invented language. An official takes down the man’s information before doctors examine his ears, mouth, heartbeat, and vision. As he passes the tests, they affix symbols to his jacket. He then explains himself to another official, showing the photo of his family. The official takes his photo and prints a passport-like document, stamping it before sending the man off. He gets in an invention that transports him into the city. It is a single-person box hanging from a spherical balloon. The perspective widens to show that the sky over the strange and built-up civilization is full of the spherical balloons.
The box sets the man down in a modest settlement. He steps out and shuts the door. The man takes in the unfamiliar culture. A boy sells newspapers covered in the strange language, a tattooed woman holds a hairless cat-like creature, a man vends something from a cart, accompanied by a creature who resembles a cross between a lizard and a dog. A couple loads giant eggs into a crate. The man takes in the sights, then tries to reset his pocket watch. However, the town clock is two star-shaped wheels, and he doesn’t comprehend it. He walks on with his case. Glowing orbs float by him in the air, suddenly picking up velocity and blowing off his hat.
When picking the hat up, he notices the ground is covered in arrows and symbols. He sits and consults a dictionary. A man approaches and asks him something, but neither can speak the other’s language. The protagonist draws the image of a bed in a room in his notebook. The other man leads the protagonist to a place where he can rent a room. He hands cash to the woman who manages the front desk, and she smiles while giving him a key. She has a little creature by her side, as do many of the people in this place. Its eyes extend up like a snail’s eyes, but it has wings like a bat.
The man’s room is small and full of peculiar bent tubes and objects. He appears disappointed. He explores the room’s objects, becoming startled when small containers open with bursts of sparks. In a large pot, he discovers a creature with gills and bunny ears. He chases the frightened animal up the ladder to the sleeping loft. Rather than attack it with the pointed stick he holds, the man shoos the creature off his bed. He opens his case and contemplates the picture of his wife and daughter at the table at home. He then puts up the framed portrait, hanging it on a nail. He contemplates the photo while the creature, standing on the windowsill, looks at the man. The perspective pulls back to show the man’s window is one of many set in an imposing wall in a city full of buildings, creatures, industrial smokestacks, and decorative monuments.
Analysis
The nostalgic, old-fashioned art style of the novel’s opening illustrations establishes a somber, reflective mood. The decontextualized six-by-six grid of thumbnail images immerse the reader in the unnamed protagonist’s perspective as he takes in the familiar objects. Together they paint the picture of a happy family who lives a modest life. However, the chips and cracks of the teapot and cup suggest they may be impoverished, and the packed trunk and travel brochures suggest someone is about to leave.
Tan emphasizes the somber mood by showing the protagonist and his wife standing glumly over the man’s packed suitcase. It is unclear why he is leaving. The morose atmosphere suggests the couple may be breaking up, or that the man is going away on business. Either way, it is evident that the departure is not a happy occasion for either of them. Tan juxtaposes the couple’s sadness with their daughter’s apparent ignorance. She smiles while her parents remained tight-lipped, suggesting that she does not understand that her father is leaving.
In an instance of situational irony, Tan breaks with the photorealism of the first few pages by introducing the fantastical image of a slender tentacle- or tail-like appendage looming menacingly over the family’s street. In a wider perspective, Tan reveals that these appendages—attached to no visible entity—are ubiquitous throughout the deserted neighborhood. In this way, Tan subtly provokes curiosity in the reader and introduces the major theme of oppression. Although it is never specified what exactly the man is escaping, the tentacle-tails represent the oppressive force that has driven him to seek a better life elsewhere.
To emphasize the companionship the man felt when with his wife and daughter, Tan shows the man staring at the photo of his family while sitting alone on the steamer ship to the new world. It turns out that he is one among countless other immigrants seeking to establish a new life in the foreign land. The images of the arrival hall and immigrant processing procedure evoke historical photographs of impoverished immigrants coming from Eastern Europe and arriving at Ellis Island, New York in the early twentieth century. However, Tan juxtaposes these allusions with fanciful architecture and an invented language. The effect is that Tan immerses the reader in the man’s experience as he takes in a place that is both familiar and utterly foreign. In this way, the reader is led to empathize with the man’s alienation.
Tan builds on the magical realism of the world by depicting the man’s journey from the processing point to the city in a piece of technology that blends an elevator box with a hot-air balloon. The strange contraption lands in a seemingly arbitrary spot in a settlement, but none of the people on the ground react to the man’s arrival, suggesting that they see such a spectacle often.
The man’s alienation increases as he walks the streets and takes in the unfamiliar sights with a puzzled, almost concerned expression on his face. He also struggles to make sense of the complicated directional markings on the ground under his feet. However, a kind stranger sees that the man needs help and offers to bring him to a place he can rent a room. Once there, the man explores the objects in his room with suspicion; the surprising things that certain appliances do only reinforce his feeling of alienation.
The section ends with an image that references the illustration of the man aboard the steamer ship. Through the man's tiny window the reader can see him staring at the portrait of his family. His window is one among countless others. By ending Part II on this image, Tan emphasizes the man’s anonymous relationship to the land he has arrived in and invites the reader to question why he has come in the first place.
