But perhaps the most notable aspect of The Arrival is the fact that there are no words to tell the story. I quickly found, however, that this peculiarity did nothing to diminish the communication between the pages and the reader, but rather added to the overall effectiveness of the story.
The story tells of a man who leaves home, and travels to a fantastical land in which he finds his way into the extant culture, and is reunited with his wife and child by the end of the tale. In the unusual construction of the environment, we sense the same isolation that the protagonist experiences upon arriving in the new world. The language is indistinguishable, the objects unfamiliar, and the creatures only vague resemblances of the ones that we have knowledge of. A lack of written word is therefore an appropriate vessel for The Arrival because it introduces the reader to a new way of reading and interaction, and parallels motifs that the plot possesses.
I suspect that some readers would react negatively to this change in literature, and argue that without words, we are not reading at all. Although there is basis for that claim, I believe that despite the untraditional method in which the novel presents itself is in fact reading, and can certainly be considered a piece of literature. In my definition of reading, the result of gaining information and what we walk away with as the audience is more important than fussing over how we get to that point. I believe that I now understand just as rich of a story by reading The Arrival without words as I would were it to include text. As was mentioned earlier, this story is a good example of how a piece could potentially be stronger by relying solely on visual language.
Overall I found The Arrival to be highly engaging, both on on subjective and objective levels. The technical craft of the art with which Tan recalls the tale is undoubtedly admirable, and tell us of greater themes such as family, love, and isolation. Its lack of words is an intriguing characteristic, but does not disappoint and serves to draw the reader in more intimately with the sophisticated happenings of the book.
