Dearly Departed: The Arrival’s Spectral Refugee

The title of Shaun Tan’s graphic novel The Arrival (2006) frames this book as depicting a journey that culminates in reaching a destination. This essay, however, complicates this framing by arguing that The Arrival’s protagonist, a refugee, functions as a spectral figure: one who emphasizes coming back, rather than arriving. Arguably, The Arrival never arrives, framing migration as a continually recurrent act, a haunting, and an ending that begins all over again. Returning, then, is the device through which this novel asks child readers to reckon with the affective and material costs of geographic and emotional displacement: what it means to depart, to be unsafe, and to be expendable.