exploring the question of how wordless comics like The Arrival can tell complex stories without using words

The Arrival by Shaun Tan's was a wonderful wordless narrative though it is the first wordless narrative I have ever read/looked at I can see the complexity in which it is able to tell the story. The first thing I noticed while reading/looking at the images was the sense of emotion you get like starting out with the picture of him and his family and going through the emotions you already get the picture of what is to come then it opens up to a full bleed image of him and his wife with there hands holding on a suitcase looking at it in a sorrow you totally understand in these to pages someone if not all will be leaving. The book also uses a really great grid system which allows it to tell the story really well allowing for larger images to be placed with small squares to really and emphasis to important images in the story. It also uses cropping in these smaller squares help by just zooming in onto parts that really tell the story like when his daughter is holding his hand before he get on the train if it was just an image that was not cropped on there hand it wouldn't have looked as dramatic. Also the full spread images give the story this giant feeling. This narrative is like a great silent film it shows the parts that will hit you and and enough back information to let you fully understand the story.