This blog began about two years ago, when I was at university studying literature. It was born into this world as an essay, but just as I have grown in those years, so too has the essay. I have dispensed with most of the frustrations that come with an essay, like referencing far too many literary critics with footnotes and a bibliography, and tidied up my seemingly young and inexperienced expression.
It is based on a children’s literature book called The Lost Thing, by the very talented Shaun Tan. One of the reasons I returned to read over my essay again was because I heard Tan had won an Oscar for the animated film he wrote and co-directed, based on this book. I’m not too sure what Tan would think of my reading of his text…
Simply put, The Lost Thing is about a young boy, living in a heavily industrialised city (based on Melbourne), who stumbles across a ‘lost thing’ at the beach one day. He feels sorry for it and assumes that it must be lost as it does not fit in to its environment, and chooses to ‘help’ it find a place in which it belongs. Here is my reading of the text. Let me know what you think.
Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing presents alien ‘others’ displaced from their home both physically and culturally. The text attempts to suggest that assisting an alien to find their home, or somewhere to belong, is a rewarding experience and builds a positive association with aliens. However, this representation is overshadowed by the negative connotations of their presence among humans. More specifically, the Lost Thing is consistently associated with dirt, uncleanliness and impurity due to their status as ‘matter out of place’, and is therefore considered destructive.
‘Otherness’ has been synonymous with dirt since European colonisation began in Africa, in which “images of colonial conquest were stamped on soap boxes”[1], symbolic of purification for the body and the soul. A powerful binary has endured through this initial ideology, that ‘blackness’ and ‘otherness’ indicates uncleanliness, savagery, and a wild, instinctual connection to nature or the earth. These links are represented in the Lost Thing, immediately linked to nature through the place where he/she is discovered by the protagonist – the beach. It is also partly organic with tentacle-like limbs, again highlighting its connection with the sea. This environment is presented as rare and beautiful contrasted again the industrial harshness of the city’s backdrop.
However, despite this positive and even admirable connection with nature, the Lost Thing is also marginalised by its difference and displacement from home (wherever that may be). Douglas addresses this type of representation by stating “…(marginalised) people…are somehow left out in the patterning of society…They may be doing nothing morally wrong, but their status is indefinable” (p. 95). While I would argue that the Lost Thing is placeless, and therefore has become a burden to society, it is also defined by humans through its strangeness. The Lost Thing’s name is assigned by a dominant white male (Tan’s protagonist, a human boy) from their point of view, and gives no indication of gender, thus removing agency from the displaced ‘other’ and dehumanising them due to the loss of their home.[2]
In addition to the Lost Thing’s alien status,Tan creates a displaced character that causes disorder and chaos in Western society through its links to pollution and dirt. As Douglas states, “…it is not because of… fear, still less dread or holy terror” that the West spurns matter out of place. Cleaning and avoiding dirt (‘otherness’) is necessary, as dirt “offends against order”[3]. The Lost Thing clearly ‘offends against the order’ of society in a number of ways.
Tan creates a clear binary representation of order against displacement through his illustrations of the city and its inhabitants. The buildings, streets and houses are neat, regimented and uniform in shape and colour. Even the people in this world are uniform, as they all have closed eyes or glasses (obvious symbolism, anyone?), women look like men and children look like adults. This unity contrasts with the bright, large roundness of the Lost Thing. It is half-manufactured, half-organic; it cannot speak, and thus has no identifiable purpose or goal. To the reader, it is very clear that the Lost Thing does not ‘fit in’ (indeed, it rarely ‘fits’ into the illustrated page), thus encouraging us to accept the protagonist’s assumption that it cannot stay in the ‘human world’. Therefore, the physical appearance of the Lost Thing alone is enough to disrupt the ordered nature of the city. However, more disturbing is the association created between the displaced alien and pollution and waste in The Lost Thing.
The Lost Thing is immediately connected with rubbish and waste in Tan’s text. The beach on which it is ‘found’ by the protagonist is very clearly littered with rubbish, positioned in the foreground of the illustration (above). This positioning invites the reader’s eye to follow the path of waste, until it comes to rest on the giant red Lost Thing. Furthermore, while the Lost Thing seems to wallow in waste, it is also presented as a source of waste. The Lost Thing’s body is covered with pipes which emit smoke or pollution, and attention is explicitly drawn to their existence by Tan, as he isolates the wisps in separate, framed pictures throughout the text. Also, the first noticeable aspect of the Lost Thing’s existence (when it is pointed out to the protagonist’s parents), is that “its feet are filthy!” and it could have “all kinds of strange diseases”. The Lost Thing is therefore only recognisable due to the disruption it brings. The advertisement (below) on the removal of such “unclaimed property” or “objects without names” also describes the Lost Things’ removal as ‘sweeping under the carpet’, as you would do with a layer of dust.
Tan’s protagonist discovers the place in which “lost things belong” behind a door, observing that it was “the sort of place you’d never know existed unless you were actually looking for it”. Debra Dudek discusses the opinion that The Lost Thing is a text that “celebrates hybridity by depicting a utopian space in which hybrid things can and do belong”. However, I disagree completely. The Utopia represented in the text (below) is another world, hidden away from the rest of society and separated by a door. Instead of finding a place in which to belong, it is simply a place that isn’t the human world. The sandy ground and stone pillars contrast with the redness and uniformity of the protagonist’s world, but it is not a welcoming place. Large, faceless ‘things’ loom down upon the reader, each occupied with their own activities from spreading graffiti across the ground, shooting rockets at each other, to engaging in voiceless conversation. There is no sense of community among the ‘things’ as they show no obvious connection to each other. Similarly, the author does not explain their existence in any way through dialogue or narration.
Tan separates the reader from this world as we are positioned to gaze through the door as the protagonist would, held at a safe distance from the chaotic mess of lost ‘things’ shown in the illustration. The layout of the page as an A3 spread also requires the reader to physically move the page in order to view it properly, holding the scene aloof. You never know, ‘otherness’ might be catching…
Finally, the minor character of the cleaner (shown below) who directs the protagonist on the path to Utopia is a powerful symbol for the community of ‘lost things’. Unlike the others, the cleaner has remained in the protagonist’s world. However, instead of creating disruption and disorder, waste and pollution, the cleaner is defined by his role in removing ‘otherness’ from society. He is a cleaner of both dirt and alien ‘other’, carrying a mop and bucket for the dirt and rubbish, and carrying cards for the removal of lost things. Tan’s inclusion of the cleaner on the final page further indicates the importance of this role in society and his text. Cleaning the waste in the structured, industrial city is critical, and he is no longer ‘lost’ – his role is very clear. However, he is illustrated alone, with hunched shoulders and his back turned to the reader, and is surrounded by darkness. Hardly an uplifting image to close the story.
While the text seems to encourage interaction and friendship with alien ‘others’ on a surface level, Tan inadvertently uses pollution as an analogy for the view that alien others are actually dangerous and grotesque in Western society. The Lost Thing causes disruption to uniform, civilised society and is therefore purged from that environment as waste, something to be removed and hidden only to be forgotten later in life. Tan’s protagonist forgets his experience as easily as a man washes his hands, and readers are encouraged to be happy that the silent Lost Thing ceases to be ‘matter out of place’, and becomes ‘matter out of civilized place’.
withered violets 