Traces of silence: reading and imagination in The arrival, by Shaun Tan

Abstract

This article examines the role of silence in shaping meaning within the visual narrative of Shaun Tan’s The arrival. It explores how silence – conceived not as emptiness but as a meaningful presence – mediates the relationship between image, reading, and imagination. In dialogue with authors such as George Steiner, David Le Breton, Cecilia Bajour, Susan Sontag, Santiago Kovadloff, Walter Benjamin, and Georges Didi-Huberman, the article argues that images generate “visual silences” by eschewing explicit representation, while simultaneously eliciting imagined experiences for the reader. The reading of these silences thus constitutes an aesthetic experience in which the reader becomes an agent of meaning-making, since silence acts as a condition of reading by mobilizing the imagination in the construction of meaning.