84 pages • 2 hours read
The Illustrated Man
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Epilogue
Epilogue Summary
The collection returns to the scene from the Prologue. The narrator has been watching the tattoos move as the Illustrated Man sleeps. The 18 stories complete, the narrator “had seen what there was to see” (275). He looks at a blank spot on the Illustrated Man’s back and, to his horror, watches his own face take shape in tattooed form. He leaps up; the Illustrated Man sleeps on.
The tattoo depicts the Illustrated Man choking the narrator to death. The narrator does not “wait for it to become clear and sharp and a definite picture” (275). He runs out into the night, confident he will reach the next town by morning.
Epilogue Analysis
After “The Illustrated Man” story, we are uncertain of William’s true nature. Like Braling and Smith in “Marionettes, Inc.,” he is an unreliable narrator. Was he as innocent as he claims in the death of his wife, or did he want to kill her all along? Will he now kill the narrator? Given what readers learned about the reliability of his clairvoyant tattoos, this seems likely. He had warned the narrator not to engage with his tattoos in the Prologue: “Don’t you look at them either, I warn you,” he said.
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By Ray Bradbury
