The Arrival


The Arrival is a graphic novel with no words used to tell the story.  The best thing to compare reading The Arrival is a storyboard of a movie or TV show.

Being able to communicate an entire story without words can be a fairly powerful thing.  Without using words, the artist has to figure out how to tell a narrative through context clues and visual cues. 
It can be difficult to achieve this goal, but the mind is pretty good at piecing things together, and filling the gaps of details.  Even in movies where the picture is moving, there are gaps and spaces of information not shown to the audience, but they accept it and still see the picture as one cohesive story.
If the author/artist shows the story well, the overall message of the graphic novel can be more powerful than ones with words.  The story would transcend language barriers, and allow anyone to relate to.
The Arrival was able to tell a story cohesive story without any words.  From my point of view the story seemed to be about a father immigrating over to another country/land with otherworldly features and creatures.  The man learns about the people and how to live in the new strange land.  Leaving his family behind and living alone was difficult, but it was all for the sake of his family.  After a period of time, he was finally reunited with his family.  They finally arrived and embraced him in their new home.

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