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Over the course of the semester, my process of writing journal entries has become a type of ritual. I will sit down at my desk with my notebook open, the book (or film or document) we are discussing on my desk, and my laptop showing a word document with the week’s prompt typed on it. Then after thinking about the prompt for the entry, while I read or watch the subject assigned I will jot down some notes, highlight quotes, write down my reactions, and include any thoughts I have that might help me answer the prompt in my notebook. It is not until after the chapter/book is read or the film is watched that I will begin to write my journal entry. While I understand that they are different, I tend to look at journal entries as little essay- responses or extremely polished notes. This might be because I’ve had little experience writing journal entries for class except in my AP Literature class where we would post our essay assignments on a class webpage.

I believe that note taking is similar to the foundation for a journal entry. When you write a journal entry you need to be clear, organized, and know what you want to say. Notes provide the basis for your thoughts without having the added requirement of staying centered around one topic. Notes can include all of the ideas and things that you think of, not just what you will use to answer your prompt like a journal would. This freedom, I’ve found, helps you eventually center on a claim because you can look back at all of your ideas and see if there is any overlap, relation, or similarity. I’ve noticed that when I’m watching a film, my notes will focus on my reactions, filming techniques, and the things that I find particularly poignant at the time. Sometimes my film notes will include the time or scene at which something occurs. When I’m summarizing, my notes will often look like a brief outline of the chapter, similar to a table of contents. If I’m reading a book/novel, my notes will be jotted down on sticky notes or pieces of paper that I can slip into the pages.

While I feel that note taking itself is an action that has benefits, I believe writing a journal entry magnifies those benefits. Writing a journal entry forces us to really understand the content of the media were focusing on. You cannot write a journal entry based off of something that you skimmed… you really need to know the material that you discussing. Although journal entries are more work, I’m glad we are doing them. Looking back on my entries, I’ve noticed that I’m discussing and analyzing techniques (whether they be artistic, literary, or film) and aspects that I most likely wouldn’t have noticed had I been just asked to watch the movie or read the book. I find myself questioning authors’ intentions more, rather than just accepting them as fact and moving on. For example, when writing about The Arrival, I hypothesize on Tan’s reasoning for weathering the pages instead of just noting that he did so. Journal entries don’t only force one to understand the topic, they also make one look for deeper meanings.

The process of writing will always be tough regardless of whether I am free-writing or writing an essay. However, writing, especially journaling, is crucial to becoming a better writer but also a better thinker. Journaling allows me to write out my thoughts towards anything without worrying about punctuation or flow. They are my words but without an enforced structure.

My last reading intensive English class was AP English Literature and Composition. Surviving that class itself was a journey since there was a large workload and our class discussions were one-dimensional. I also noticed that the same people would participate, causing the discussion to always steer in one direction, and when someone tried to mention something else, that person was ignored. As soon as I became aware of this, I stopped participated and enjoying the class. The reason I disliked that class was because of how limited we were in our views and opinions, which could have easily been solved if we were asked to share some of our opinions through journaling.

This mindset of not enjoying English classes continued along as I went to college. However, the second MHC seminar changed my view of English classes due to journaling. Yes, writing them is a pain and can sometimes take more time than I would like, but I enjoy elaborating about aspects of a reading we might not have discussed in class. I also enjoy being able to sometimes incorporate parts of my journals when I participate in class discussions.

I also enjoy journaling because I can fully explain my idea without worrying about whether I am taking up too much class time or whether I am elaborating enough. Sometimes, I refrain from participating in class because I do not like when everyone fixates their eyes on me when I want to say something. Due to this, I occasionally question why I participated and try to draw back to my bubble. Fortunately, when I journal, I never truly have to worry about how people react physically to my words. I do not have a person glancing at me as I write. Instead, I feel free because I can look more thoroughly at what I read and pick out what I saw that others may have missed.

Overall, journaling is tedious, tough, and time-consuming. Aside from those setbacks, it is incredibly rewarding; not only can I describe my perspective, but I can also see how my thoughts change towards each piece. Here, I can write independently with no worries and no interruptions.

Writing journals is an extremely different process than note-taking, in many ways. Note-taking is simpler in that it requires less thinking. While not-taking, you write things just the way they are. They are often short sentences written to trigger memories when they are re-read. On the other hand, journaling requires more thinking, analyzing, and processing different types of information. A journal can introduce an opinion, argument, detailed analysis, questioning, and so much more. I feel that when one writes a journal, one is required to think deeply about a certain thing and express their own feelings or their own interpretations about the data. Therefore, I think note-taking and journaling require completely different processes to achieve completely different outcomes.

The journal entries that are done for this class are never quite the same. Every assignment has a different prompt relating to the reading/film. The only journals that are similar are the summaries and these actually remind me the most of note-taking. However, note-taking is less crafted and organized than an informative summary. Other journal entries (non-summaries) usually require us to analyze a certain scene, certain relationships in a reading, or camera techniques in a film. These prompts usually require one to go back to the reading/movie to recall what happened. The journals often make me see something clearer than I had seen the first time around. When rewetting a movie scene, there is more clarity and awareness of what is going on and this enables the viewer to deeply scrutinize something. The same thing goes for re-reading a scene in a novel/article.

Journals, for me, are a great way to express myself. The thing I like most about my journals is the way I am able to express my opinion on a certain topic. The one thing I do not like about my journaling is that I often put too much thought into it that I feel it becomes too formal for journal writing. I feel that journals should just flow more naturally but this does not make writing them less enjoyable.

Before this class, I’ve never written journal entries so consistently and so often. At the beginning of the semester, I thought it would be a major pain to write journal entries almost every single week. Turns out, I was pretty wrong. Not only has it sharpened my analytical skills and how to process my thoughts into words, but it has taught me to actively read instead of passively read. I used to just read the words in a book without fully digesting what they meant but now I can gladly say that I am able to fully understand what I’m reading (most of the time anyways).

While I’m reading, I actively take notes and think about what the author is truly trying to convey to me as a reader. This applies to movies as well; I am able to fully grasp a scene in a movie better now. It’s interesting to find out what the hidden meaning is and not just what the words are literally saying. What I like about my entries is that they delve into the aspects of the passage that I just read and causes me to think even deeper about the passage itself. In many of my journals, I used direct examples to further demonstrate my analysis. I find that without examples, my entries would not be successful at all. What I dislike about my entries is that they usually don’t go as deep as I want them to go. After writing the entries, I usually find something from that passage that I may have overlooked and want to analyze it more. If I had analyzed deeper and realized this earlier at the time that I was writing my entry, they would have been much more interesting and thought provoking.

For me, note taking is completely different than journaling. Note taking is a singular task where you just write down what’s on the board or write down what the teacher says. There is usually little to no thought process while note taking. While writing a journal, you are required to think deeper than what the author or director is explicitly telling you. You must find and analyze something that is unique to the story or character. We may think of it in our heads after reading a passage, but completely analyzing something and writing it down allows us to complete our thoughts and create something great.

Journal entries in this course have served different purposes for me based on the media of our texts. When writing about literature, for example, I find my journal entries to be more exploratory. My first sentence answers the question I am responding to, rather directly, and the rest of the journal is a process of discovering how my claim is supported by evidence in the text. I notice that I have a knack for embedding quotes into my writing which I feel makes my journal entries on written works more complete and my opinions more credible.

Journal entries are nothing like note-taking for me. In fact, it is based on the notes I take that I write my entries. I don’t find journal writing redundant due to my additional note-taking but substantiating—a way to flesh out the ideas I have only jotted in the margins of the text.

However, when writing about film, my writing becomes much more technical and the entries serve as practice for enhancing my descriptive summarizing skills. When I write about film, I tend to have all of the evidence in the types of shots and angles employed and inductively come to a conclusion on meaning as opposed to having a general opinion and returning to the text to pick out my evidence when I read literature.

Overall, journal entries allow me to reflect more fully about the ideas I have while reading literature or watching films by writing about those ideas.

The protagonist is baffled and overwhelmed by his new home, and everything around him is strange. He is lost and frustrated by the unfamiliarity of the environment and surroundings. The words and characters that appear around the city in this new world are confusing and make no sense. Tan does this so that we understand the protagonist’s experience and bewilderment. The letters look like symbols that resemble hieroglyphics, but could also be a combination of multiple languages. Tan includes somewhat familiar aspects in the new world that can be connected to something that we understand. For example, some of the letters look like letters from the Latin alphabet but they are upside down, mirrored, or in another orientation.

The most interesting part regarding words and symbols is one poster that a man is carrying in chapter three. The protagonist is waiting for the flying boat in the same way he would if he were waiting for a train. On the platform a man in the corner is carrying a sign with visible Chinese characters. These are the only clear cut symbols that we can recognize throughout the graphic novel. Those characters mean Tan in Chinese, but even more striking, they are the same characters for my last name in Chinese.

One of the first images shown after the protagonist gets off of the ship to his new home depicts the immigration hub for this place against the larger image of this new city in the background. This image resonated with me because, especially after all of the readings we have done for class, it looks like a fictional, fantasy Ellis Island. The maze of people waiting on line, the cramped yet efficient structure of the place, and the beckoning, hopeful image of the glorious new city waiting for these people on the other side all bring Ellis Island and the experiences that millions of immigrants have had there to mind.

However, the distinctly surreal qualities of this image causes this place to clearly differ from Ellis Island. All of the inscriptions on the signs in the immigration center and on the buildings in the distance are in a foreign language entirely invented/contrived by Tan. This, as well as the overall surreal, fantasy-like illustration of the Tan’s city, places the reader into the protagonist’s shoes in the sense that the reader feels like just as much of an outsider to this city as a result of having no knowledge of its language whatsoever and of having never seen a city quite like this before.

Lucia Lopez

Shaun Tan’s The Arrival tells the story of a man immigrating to a new, foreign country for the first time. Wordless, the book shows the reader the struggles of those who travelled to other countries in search of socioeconomic freedom for themselves and their families. Although the illustrations tell a captivating story, Tan’s artistry is shown right in the beginning, before the book even starts- on the title and publication pages.

There are two title pages; the first one the reader sees is written in an illegible language, alluding to the language barrier most immigrants face when they travel to a foreign country. The second title page is written in English as well as in a different font. The two title pages have similarities in that they are both look like official documents and are yellowed to appear old, as if they were handed down. They also have marks on them from tape and dirtiness.

The first title page and the publication page both have smaller documents printed on them along with stamps. These are reminiscent of the kinds of documents immigrants such as those who came through Ellis Island had filled out for them on their journeys. The first title page seems to be meant to confuse the reader a little bit and take them out of the world they know where they understand everything and their surroundings are familiar. Tan tries to make the reader have the mindset of someone who can’t understand what they’re seeing or reading. The only word in English is “inspection,” not making the first page very welcoming to the reader.

The second title page is in English and although it is all illustrated, the center looks like a photograph was taped to the page. In the “photograph,” there is a man looking behind him. It reinforced the theme of his leaving his home country, and he might be looking back at his family and everything else he left. There is a border around the “photo” that looks very detailed and delicate, and reminiscent of old European photos. These first few pages evoke a strangeness and unfamiliarity that is present through the protagonist’s story.

Shaun Tan’s The Arrival uses whole pages to display visual media elements often seen in film, such as panning outward to expand the storyline of the main character to a whole generation of immigrants.
The opening sequence of Part II begins zoomed on a picture of the nameless protagonist’s family. The sequence continues with a frame by frame pan outwards. We see that the protagonist somberly sits in front of the picture while eating. As the image zooms outward, we realize that not only is our protagonist suffering this lonely journey, but also thousands of other immigrants have left behind their families to help them survive. In this sequence, Tan manages to enamor the reader with the personal story of the protagonist, while also connecting his story to the overarching history of immigration in the late-19th to early-20th Century. The outward pan sequence that begins Part II establishes the protagonist of Shaun Tan’s The Arrival as an Everyman in immigrant history.