Book Question of the Week: The Arrival by Shaun Tan
Welcome to the first ever Book Question of the Week Game! Here's how we play: first I pick a book. Then I pull a question card from my Table Topics cube and answer the question (the book gets chosen first so I don't cheat and choose an easy answer). Then, it's your turn. You pick a book and answer the question for your book in the comments. Though I will always choose a multicultural title, you certainly do not need to.
Today's Book: The Arrival by Shaun Tan
Today's Question: How could the conflict have resolved differently?
There isn't so much a conflict in The Arrival as there is a situation. Or maybe it's just that the situation, rather than characters, provides the conflict. So the situation could certainly have turned out differently.
The Arrival is a wordless book, or graphic novel (are they different?), in which the foreign arriver is not the little creature on the cover, but the man who is studying him. This is an immigration story set in a fantasy world-- an incredibly beautiful, majestic, full, and foreign fantasy world. It was also the first time that I truly understood what it was like to be an immigrant while reading a book. Because the man's new home is like nothing here on earth, I felt like a new arrival myself. I couldn't read the signs, and I didn't understand the culture. At the same time, Tan used his amazing wordless pictures to convey how much the man missed his family back home.
The book ultimately has a happy ending, like many real-life immigrant stories. I think that people are extremely adaptable, and there is no doubt that with time, this man would settle in and feel comfortable in this strange new world. In real life, however, the story of his wife and daughter may not have resolved so wonderfully as it did in this book. There are so many families that are not able to join the members that first moved to another country.
The ending of The Arrival was the best possible one for this immigrant and his family (and made me cry); it certainly could have turned out much worse.
Now, it's your turn! Write an answer for a book of your choice in the comments.
Today's Book: The Arrival by Shaun TanToday's Question: How could the conflict have resolved differently?
There isn't so much a conflict in The Arrival as there is a situation. Or maybe it's just that the situation, rather than characters, provides the conflict. So the situation could certainly have turned out differently.
The Arrival is a wordless book, or graphic novel (are they different?), in which the foreign arriver is not the little creature on the cover, but the man who is studying him. This is an immigration story set in a fantasy world-- an incredibly beautiful, majestic, full, and foreign fantasy world. It was also the first time that I truly understood what it was like to be an immigrant while reading a book. Because the man's new home is like nothing here on earth, I felt like a new arrival myself. I couldn't read the signs, and I didn't understand the culture. At the same time, Tan used his amazing wordless pictures to convey how much the man missed his family back home.
The book ultimately has a happy ending, like many real-life immigrant stories. I think that people are extremely adaptable, and there is no doubt that with time, this man would settle in and feel comfortable in this strange new world. In real life, however, the story of his wife and daughter may not have resolved so wonderfully as it did in this book. There are so many families that are not able to join the members that first moved to another country.
The ending of The Arrival was the best possible one for this immigrant and his family (and made me cry); it certainly could have turned out much worse.
Now, it's your turn! Write an answer for a book of your choice in the comments.
Labels: immigrants, questions
posted by Renee at 5:03 PM
feed me
2 Comments:
I chose Monsoon, by Uma Krishnaswami.
How could the conflict have resolved differently?
The conflict revolves around the monsoon rains, about the wait and the anxiety born from numerous weeks of blistering heat and dryness. When will they come? “How much will it rain? How fast, how hard?” Will these rains even come? We follow a young girl, as she waits, and finally celebrates the arrival of those rains.
The rains might have arrived earlier, but with such a force that the story would have been about the chaos and destruction created by floods. Or they might have not come at all, and the book would have been about another type of devastation. As it is, the ending is very satisfying: one can almost feel the earth soaking in the rain, the relief of the people feeling the water, the freshness on their skin, and the joy of that young girl dancing to celebrate the arrival of the much awaited monsoon.
This is an interesting exercise. Thank you for thinking it up.
Katia, thanks for participating. I love Monsoon too!
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