The Illustrated Man

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1951

A 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.

Download PDF

Access Full Guide

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.