Ernst Trasnlation

Panel 1: Rooster mocks those without balance by easily standing on to of and egg.

Panel 2: Rooster and Rooster-man looking over a dead body. They seem indifferent about the situation.

Panel 3: Rooster-men burying the dead. They are questioning the undressing woman.

Panel 4: Rooster-men are inspecting the items left behind by the dead. They unearthed a body to do so.

Panel 5: The Roosters have murdered the woman. The Rooster-man in the doorway is very troubled and hurt by this action.

Panel 6: Rooster-man is trying to enter the room. The man is pushing a wardrobe up against the door in order to keep out the Rooster-man.

The Arrival

     Words help us understand stories in our own language and culture, but pictures are universal. Shaun Tan's The Arrival paints a strong and wonderful tale of an immigrant entering a world that is unfamiliar and at sometimes a scary place. Every page moves the story along in a very straightforward motion with no real confusion at all. As bizarre as some of the imagery is, the landscapes and odd objects and foreign language really help in expressing how difficult it can be to communicate in and to discover a new city in a foreign land. The changes in tone are clearly expressed through changes in brightness in each panel as the happier moments have a strong glow while the darker and sadder moments are expressed by heavier shadows and bleak scenery. Each chapter has a clear transition and explores a different step in the cycle of immigrating to a new land. Facial expressions become an essential tool to understand the characters and to explore the narrative of Tan's story. By using repetition to show the before and after of events, The Arrival at times feels less like an ordinary comic and more of a movie split into separate stills. Words have never been necessary to tell a story, whether it be in a comic or in a film, because images get across more in just one panel or still than words could get across in several paragraphs. Shaun Tan's The Arrival makes this quite clear in it's wonderful storytelling in the form of a wordless comic.