5/18/2023 0 Comments Cicada by shaun tan![]() ![]() It’s about working day after day, week after week, year after year, at a job that is thankless and grim. It’s about the pain of feeling different. ![]() It’s certainly about being bullied and about being marginalized. But it’s a story that can be read - and contemplated and discussed - on many levels. And it flies off to the forest, laughing at humans. Cicada’s body splits and out of the formerly green and now grey body emerges a beautiful glowing orange creature with translucent wings. While the reader thinks that one thing is going to happen, something entirely different happens. He’s been ignored, overlooked, mistreated, and downtrodden the whole time. After seventeen cheerless grey years, he retires without so much as a thank you. He is paid so little that he must sleep inside a wall at the office. He is bullied by those who see him as different, and they think cicada is stupid even though he’s never made a mistake. He is alone in a sea of cubicles, and he alone finishes his work after the humans leave for the day. Because cicada is not human, he’s not promoted or even allowed to use the bathroom. He has worked for seventeen years without any sick days. And cicada, who is given no other name, works as a data entry clerk in a grey cubicle. It’s about a nameless city filled with grey skyscrapers. ![]() As Tan writes on the inside cover of the book, “Cicada tell story. Shaun Tan creates another thoughtful, insightful, simple-yet-oh-so-complex picture book with “Cicada.” The plot, on one hand, is simple. ![]()
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