The Arrival is a beautiful example of why stories can be told purely visually. The art itself, each image contains a narrative and due to the clarity words become unnecessary to get what needs to be said across. This combined with the flow of the panels help paint a larger picture. If the art itself are words, then the panel layout could be akin to punctuation.
The art, despite being very surrealist in places with creatures and buildings that look like they came from a Hieronymus Bosch painting, maintains a surprising level of realism. The people are all drawn in a very realistic style, perhaps letting the reader have a easy time identifying and understanding both their facial expressions and their actions. There is little room for guess work with these. Our protagonist is drawn scratching his head, looking just like a normal guy performing this same action. It is easily understood he is confused.
Another cue for what is going on in the story is far more subtle. The novel, despite containing only sepia tones shows an impressive display of color. It differs from scene to scene, which helps the viewer understand that we have moved on. It goes from being nearly grayscale in some scenes to being a much warmer very yellow tone in others. In the page with the clouds all in different colors and the flowers going through the seasons, it is a great way to show passage of time.
The panel size is also an important story telling device you really can only get from graphic novels. The smaller the panel, typically the less important. The viewers eyes skim through them fast and collect the details needed in a pretty cursory way. Because of this, the time between smaller panels is represented as less. The huge page spreads often have huge amounts of detail and story contained within a single image so we can take in much more information. For each immigrant, a single large page is given in explanation for what was wrong with their old home. No words are needed but we understand what they are running from, no matter how surreal.
All these things carry emotion and despite not knowing word for word what was going on, we are still able to take in the full picture of this strange story. If anything, its more akin to how we take in information on a daily basis as opposed to reading a book.
