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Ray BradburyA 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.
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.
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.
By Ray Bradbury
A Graveyard for Lunatics
A Graveyard for Lunatics
Ray Bradbury
All Summer In A Day
All Summer In A Day
Ray Bradbury
A Sound Of Thunder
A Sound Of Thunder
Ray Bradbury
Dandelion Wine
Dandelion Wine
Ray Bradbury
Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed
Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed
Ray Bradbury
Death is a Lonely Business
Death is a Lonely Business
Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
Marionettes, Inc.
Marionettes, Inc.
Ray Bradbury
Selected from Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed
Selected from Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed
Ray Bradbury
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Ray Bradbury
The Halloween Tree
The Halloween Tree
Ray Bradbury
The Martian Chronicles
The Martian Chronicles
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The Other Foot
The Other Foot
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The Pedestrian
The Pedestrian: A Fantasy in One Act
Ray Bradbury
There Will Come Soft Rains
There Will Come Soft Rains
Ray Bradbury
The Toynbee Convector
The Toynbee Convector
Ray Bradbury
The Veldt
The Veldt
Ray Bradbury
Zero Hour
Zero Hour
Ray Bradbury