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The Lost Thing Essay

Decent Essays

The need to feel a sense of belonging is a powerful and universal one. This sense is formed from connections made with others. The result can be a range of emotions, from an increase in the feeling of security and self esteem, to feelings of unhappiness and loneliness. When someone does not fit in, often because they are different, the negative emotions that they feel can be very harmful.
The picture book The Lost Thing (2000), written and illustrated by Shaun Tan, explores the themes of belonging and alienation that occur in modern society. The story begins with a man trying to recall stories from his youth. The only one he can remember is about when he was a young boy and he discovers a gigantic, red, machine-like animal that is lost …show more content…

“I didn’t know what to think but the lost thing made an approving sort of noise”, “They all seemed happy enough”. To sum up I believe that the city in which the book is set in is a retro-futuristic world where everything seems grey, dull and suffocating and the body language of the crowd reinforces it.
In The Lost Thing, the words and illustrations are interdependent on each other. The text is simple and the setting and characters are not described in any great detail. By contrast, the artwork is extremely detailed and shows much of the story’s deeper meanings. There are no empty spaces on the pages and collages fill each page using old physics and engineering text books. This gives the sense of a dry and industrial world, filled with meaningless and pointless detail, where the inhabitants are bogged down with red tape and too busy with the daily grind of the workplace. However, on careful examination of the detailed artwork, humour can be found. For example, there is an ad for a “mobile visual technician” for whom “No client too irritating”. This contrast gives some light relief to an otherwise depressing view of the society in which the young boy lives. The overall colour scheme that Shaun Tan uses is one of faded old yellowing paper, dull reds and varying shades of grey. This gives a sense of an overcrowded, compressed and congested world, and the muted and sepia colour tones add to the feeling

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