84 pages • 2 hours read
Ray BradburyThe Illustrated Man
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1951A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Prologue
Prologue Summary
The narrator, on a walking tour of Wisconsin in early September, meets the Illustrated Man. He doesn’t realize the Man is tattooed yet but does notice that he’s overweight, with the face of a child.
The Man asks if the narrator knows where he can find a job; he has been unable to hold one down for 40 years. Despite the heat, he does not roll up the sleeves of his shirt. He explains to the narrator that, though this is prime carnival season, they always fire him after 10 days or so. Once he confirms it’s all right if he stays, he shows the narrator the Illustrations on his body. Children especially seem to enjoy them: “Everyone wants to see the pictures,” the Man says, “and yet nobody wants to see them” (2).
The narrator marvels at the beauty and realism of the images: “If El Greco had painted miniatures in his prime” (3), they would resemble his tattoos. The Man wishes he could destroy them, though, because they reveal the future. He claims that in the year 1900, 50 years before, a witch from the future tattooed him. He’s tried to find her every year since, intending to kill her, but has been unsuccessful.
Each Illustration “is a little story. If you watch them, in a few minutes they tell you a tale” (4). In fact, if someone watches a blank spot long enough, they will see their own death play out on his skin. The Man warns the narrator to look away while he sleeps, but the narrator is captivated. The images begin to move. The narrator focuses on images from “The Veldt,” leading into the first story.
Prologue Analysis
The Prologue for Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man introduces many of the key themes explored in the collection. It also establishes that Bradbury’s stories will serve as a kind of apologia, or formal defense, of the writer’s favored genre: speculative fiction.
Speculative fiction centers on “what-if” scenarios, often involving futuristic or supernatural themes. Bradbury uses the character of a tattooed man, a carnival freak who exists on the periphery of polite society, as a metaphor for the social stigma this genre often faces. In Bradbury’s time and our own, horror and sci-fi are often sidelined as immature at best, morally reprehensible or dangerous at worst. Children love the Illustrated Man’s tattoos, as they often adore horror and sci-fi in real life. However, the Man cannot hold down a job in the adult society because of the nature of the stories—especially their violence.
In their “living genius,” the tattoos are as astounding as a painting by El Greco (2-3). It requires no less talent, Bradbury contends, to create excellent speculative fiction than any other form of art. Perhaps most importantly, despite their status as fiction—the tattoos are not real—the Illustrations portray reality in some form; that is, the truth of the future.
The character of the Illustrated Man serves a framing device: The 18 tattoos the narrator sees represent the 18 stories in the collection. Readers will learn the details of the Man’s life in the final episode, “The Illustrated Man.”
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