In Year 8, students wrote an essay discussing representation in a picture book text. The topic this year was ‘All texts are about real people. Who is your chosen visual text about? What does it seem to be saying about them?’
The essay was planned in advance and written in class under timed conditions. Hayley L wrote an excellent response to this question based on the picture book The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan. Here is her essay, reproduced almost word for word (some minor edits were made here and there for clarity, or when there were minor expression issues).
Ever feel like the world was more fun and interesting as a child? As we grow up, we just keep noticing more and more problems in our world, and it starts to look more like the world of Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing. This picture book is told through the eyes of a boy who narrates his existence in a world with no wonder, a world that values uniformity. He finds a giant, red, creature that is part crab, part teapot, which looks out of place – he calls it ‘the lost thing’. After finding a utopia for the lost thing to live in, he is absorbed back into his own dystopian world. The Lost Thing is about us, our society. Everyone is so focused on their own lives and their own success. We eventually lose wonder, individuality and the ability to see what’s beautiful in life. We are slowly sucked in this world.
The world of The Lost Thing is an exaggerated version of our own world. In a layout where we can see the suburbs of The Lost Thing’s world, every house is identical. Hundreds of houses are placed in a uniform pattern. The curve line that the houses form, and the high angle let us see the large amount of houses that surround the narrator, his friend Pete, and the lost thing. It creates a mood of isolation and threat. It reminds me of the suburbs of our own world. It’s an uncanny valley version of it, but the repetitive arrangement of the houses looks a lot like some of the neighbourhoods we live in. The two worlds may feel different, but if we look into it, it’s a dystopian, exaggerated version of our own world.
Our society shares the same problems as the one depicted in The Lost Thing. For example, in the layout where the narrator brings the lost thing to his family home, everything in the background is cramped up. The furniture, the people, and the lost thing are all stuffed into a small, claustrophobic frame. The narrator mentions that his parents are “too busy discussing current events” that they don’t even notice the lost thing – even though it’s literally right behind them and enormous. Even after the narrator points it out to them, they make dismissive comments and immediately go back to their own conversations.
In another layout, the narrator asks around to find out if anyone knows anything about the lost thing. The bright colours of the thing are contrasted with the dull colours of the world around it. It is very clearly different from everything else, yet the people neither notice it nor care about it. It is very clearly different from everything else, yet the people neither notice it nor care about it. The people in the world of The Lost Thing don’t look around their own world and go ‘wow, that’s out of the ordinary.’ It is a direct reflection of our world where we’re all focused on ourselves and the things happening to us. Have you ever been told off by someone because you got out your phone while they were in the middle of talking to you? We’re all constantly distracted away from the wonder of the world around us.
However, Shaun Tan’s message is not hopeless. It is not impossible to see the lost things around us. Throughout the book, the little squiggly arrows that end up helping to direct the lost thing. Homes can be found everywhere if you look: the beach, where the narrator finds the thing; the repetitive suburbs; the city, and more. Almost every layout has this little detail hidden somewhere.
Everytime, that squiggly little arrow is pointing in the opposite direction that the narrator is walking, until he finds a clue about getting the lost thing home to the utopian world. Moreover, in the second last layout, a yellowish, lamp-like lost thing can be seen placed in the centre of the frame as the narrator says he has “stopped noticing” them. That lost thing is clearly the odd thing out among its dull surroundings. In a way, this symbolises the beauty and the wonder in life.
Tan is telling us that there are always little details and lost things around us, waiting for us to notice and discover them. By the end of the story, the narrator may have stopped noticing the wonder in his life, even as the yellow lost thing is right in front of his eyes. It is a reminder that the world around us can’t make us fade into the background if we open up our eyes and try to see the wonder. No matter how dull the world is, there will always be wondrous lost things around us. We just have to stop being “too busy doing other stuff” and take notice of them.
The Lost Thing wants us to follow the squiggly little arrows in our life and challenge societal norms, look around and find the lost things which are the beauty and wonder of life. The entire book is about us and what we might become if everyone is only focused on themselves. We lose individuality and blend in with the world around us.
