Year 7 English students have recently been studying the book The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan and have been discussing in class about the different Visual Techniques.
The class became particularly interested in the symbolism of the clouds, and one of the students, Harry Maclean, came up with the idea to email the author, Shaun Tan.
Harry and the class received a huge surprise when the author replied to Harry’s question: “Hello, my class are studying The Lost Thing and want to know what the clouds mean in the book”.
Here is Shaun’s response:
Hello Harry,
That’s actually a very good question, I’m glad you asked! You can tell from the book that I thought about the clouds quite a lot in the illustrations 🙂
It’s really open to interpretation by different readers, there is no strict meaning. To me, I think the clouds represent a kind of free, natural and formless world, of something hard to map, name and contain. You will notice that in the world of the book, there is almost nothing natural left except clouds; not a plant in sight, and only the odd urban or domesticated animal, and people and machines. That’s it. But the sky remains wild. And these strange, mutant-like lost things, which are kind of like wild nature that keep appearing with no particular shape or purpose, are a bit like those clouds.
I also think clouds are something beautiful that frequently goes unnoticed (like the lost things). I always knew the story would start with a boy looking at a cloud through a tram window, something I hadn’t thought about much before. Then he sees The Lost Thing, as if he has now ’tuned in’ to looking at things more openly.
Thanks for your question!
Shaun
