A wordless book told entirely in pictures, The Arrival follows a man as he packs a trunk of possessions, says goodbye to his wife and daughter, and travels by ship to a foreign land.
The ship reaches the harbor, and the man goes through processing along with the other immigrants. After he passes a medical examination, the man is given his immigration papers and sent on his way. A box hanging from a spherical balloon takes the man into the city. All around him are inscrutable symbols and people engaging in peculiar customs. Many people have small creatures at their sides or on their shoulders.
A local sees the man struggling to read his map. They can't understand each other, so the man draws in his notebook the image of a bed. The local leads him to a woman who rents the man a room. It is a small room full of unfamiliar objects. The man finds a creature who looks like a cross between a dog and a lizard hiding in a pot. Instead of attacking the creature as he initially intends, the man shoos it off his bed. From the windowsill, the dumb-looking but attentive creature watches the man settle in.
The creature goes out with the man in the morning. The man meets a woman who helps him navigate the public transit system of flying boats. She tells him about how she escaped slavery as a girl and stowed away on a train to come to the land they are in. The man arrives at his stop and goes to a food seller. He is unfamiliar with the peculiarly shaped foods, but the seller and his son give him samples. The food seller relates to the man how he and his wife escaped from their homeland. Giant men dressed like exterminators were vacuuming tiny people up off the streets of the city. The food seller and his wife hid under a sewer hole cover until it was safe, then paid somehow for a ladder and climbed a wall to reach the beach. They rowed away. At the food seller's house, the man is delighted to eat the unique new foods. The happy family entertains him by playing fanciful instruments.
The man settles into life in the new land, eating the new culture's food and getting accustomed to having a creature as a pet. He goes out in search of work, being turned down by many people before finding work pasting posters on a wall. However, the man, still not literate in the local language, does not realize he is putting the posters on the wall upside down. The man then gets a job at a factory, doing quality control for small objects on a conveyor belt. He works across from an old man in a pointed hat. The old man recounts his experience as a young soldier, going off to war only to be the only one in his platoon to survive, winding up without a leg amid a wasteland of corpses. After work, the old man invites the protagonist to play a game resembling lawn bowling.
The man sends letters folded in the shape of birds along with cash to his family. One day, he receives a letter from them and then looks to the sky. There is a balloon coming down near him. He rushes out in the snow and tracks the balloon until it sets down in an open area. His wife and daughter emerge from the box and the family runs to each other to reunite.
The book ends with the man and his wife and daughter laughing together at their table. They are surrounded by ornate, unique objects crafted in the local culture's style. The daughter leaves the apartment with their pet running alongside her. On the street, she sees a recent immigrant struggling to read a map. The girl offers her help and points the woman in the direction she needs to travel.
