The Inquisitive Mind of Petite Peculiar Eric
“I always overwrite - really awful, long bits of script - and then I trim it down to the bare bones and then add a little bit to colour it in. At the end of all of my stories, I test for wordless comprehension. So I remove the text and see if it works by itself. And if it does, I feel that that's a successful story.” -- Shaun Tan
In 2008, Shaun Tan launched an ingenious piece of work, Tales from Outer Suburbia to the cosmos of literary fiction. It is a combination of whimsical short stories that delves into the experience of an immigrant, the love and acceptance for diversity and the surroundings we often abandon and go unnoticed - whether it is due to indifference or disdain. Tan, an Australian …show more content…
Eric the petite exchange student is drawn to be peculiar, his shape clearly symbolizes his differentiation in culture, language, beliefs, and interests, to the suburban people. Therefore, no one understood his way of living. Eric is also illustrated with a very delicate tiny, slim body, he is also very quiet and kept in which suggests that he is often neglected or overlooked for importance and doesn't feel comfortable expressing himself effectively. In some parts of the story, the locals often perceived Eric's actions as odd, for example, when he sleeps and studies in a kitchen pantry or when he shows too much interest to little unimportant objects he discovers on the ground. The mother in the story would always say “It must be a cultural thing.” To the mother, everything Eric does is because he is different and possesses a different culture. However, that is as much as she cares to know about his actions. This displays the lack of concern or interest people have for anyone or anything different to them. The locals truly view Eric as somebody they could never communicate with or understand because they don’t even try to break the barriers between their …show more content…
Tan depicts the immigrant as an actual alien, through conceptual playful, interactive illustrations and multiple symbols that offer an allegorical meaning, that the author tries to convey. Tan unfolds the conceptual story of an immigrant into a fictional story of an exchange student, forcing readers to analyze the story beyond the text. “At the end of all of my stories, I test for wordless comprehension. So I remove the text and see if it works by itself.”- Shaun tan. It is true one picture is worth ten thousand words, sometimes it’s easier to absorb and communicate through symbolic images. Reading texts and seeing images can lead us to multiple ideas and understandings. his story is about observing various aspects of life appreciating and cherishing little moments and trying to become familiar with people and things we do not know by breaking cultural
“I always overwrite - really awful, long bits of script - and then I trim it down to the bare bones and then add a little bit to colour it in. At the end of all of my stories, I test for wordless comprehension. So I remove the text and see if it works by itself. And if it does, I feel that that's a successful story.” -- Shaun Tan
In 2008, Shaun Tan launched an ingenious piece of work, Tales from Outer Suburbia to the cosmos of literary fiction. It is a combination of whimsical short stories that delves into the experience of an immigrant, the love and acceptance for diversity and the surroundings we often abandon and go unnoticed - whether it is due to indifference or disdain. Tan, an Australian …show more content…
Eric the petite exchange student is drawn to be peculiar, his shape clearly symbolizes his differentiation in culture, language, beliefs, and interests, to the suburban people. Therefore, no one understood his way of living. Eric is also illustrated with a very delicate tiny, slim body, he is also very quiet and kept in which suggests that he is often neglected or overlooked for importance and doesn't feel comfortable expressing himself effectively. In some parts of the story, the locals often perceived Eric's actions as odd, for example, when he sleeps and studies in a kitchen pantry or when he shows too much interest to little unimportant objects he discovers on the ground. The mother in the story would always say “It must be a cultural thing.” To the mother, everything Eric does is because he is different and possesses a different culture. However, that is as much as she cares to know about his actions. This displays the lack of concern or interest people have for anyone or anything different to them. The locals truly view Eric as somebody they could never communicate with or understand because they don’t even try to break the barriers between their …show more content…
Tan depicts the immigrant as an actual alien, through conceptual playful, interactive illustrations and multiple symbols that offer an allegorical meaning, that the author tries to convey. Tan unfolds the conceptual story of an immigrant into a fictional story of an exchange student, forcing readers to analyze the story beyond the text. “At the end of all of my stories, I test for wordless comprehension. So I remove the text and see if it works by itself.”- Shaun tan. It is true one picture is worth ten thousand words, sometimes it’s easier to absorb and communicate through symbolic images. Reading texts and seeing images can lead us to multiple ideas and understandings. his story is about observing various aspects of life appreciating and cherishing little moments and trying to become familiar with people and things we do not know by breaking cultural