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.
During Reading
Reading Questions & Paired Texts
Reading Check and Short Answer Questions on key points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.
PROLOGUE
Reading Check
1. Who tattooed the Illustrated Man?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Why does the Illustrated Man warn the narrator to look away from his tattoos while he sleeps?
STORY 1: “The Veldt”
Reading Check
1. What do George and Lydia see when they enter their children’s virtual reality nursery?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Why does the child psychologist David McClean think Peter and Wendy are preoccupied with death and violence?
STORY 2: “Kaleidoscope”
Reading Check
1. Who is Hollis?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. How does Hollis realize he is different from Lespere?
Paired Resource
- This article from NASA’s Human Research Program explores the physical and mental health risks of space travel.
- This connects to the theme of Technology and the Dysfunctional Family.
- What are the physical and mental health risks of space travel? How are some of these risks imagined in Bradbury’s stories?
STORY 3: “The Other Foot”
Reading Check
1. Where and when does Story 3 take place?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. What happened to Earth after the Black community relocated to Mars?
STORY 4: “The Highway”
Reading Check
1. What is the reason behind the unusual traffic?
STORY 5: “The Man”
Reading Check
1. What does Hart send Martin to find out?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Why are the Martian natives not interested in the visitors from Earth?
STORY 6: “The Long Rain”
Reading Check
1. What is a Sun Dome?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Why are the four men in Story 6 so desperate and miserable?
STORY 7: “The Rocket Man”
Reading Check
1. Who is the narrator of Story 7?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Why does Doug’s father make him promise never to be a rocket man?
Paired Resource
“How Elton John Created Rocket Man”
- This 8-minute video (stop at 6:58) discusses how Bradbury’s short story inspired Elton John’s famous song, and it explores the meaning behind the lyrics.
- This connects to the theme of Technology and the Dysfunctional Family.
- How does Elton John’s song explore themes found in Bradbury’s story?
STORY 8: “The Last Night of the World”
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. How do the people in the story all know the end of the world is coming?
STORY 9: “The Exiles”
Reading Check
1. What is the significance of the 200 books on the ship?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Who are causing the deaths of the rocket men in the story?
Paired Resource
“Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools”
- This article from PEN America discusses book bans and growing censorship as social and political movements.
- This connects to the theme of Cultural Conflict and Consumerism.
- What are some of the implications of book bans? What subjects, audiences, or places are targeted and/or more affected by this kind of censorship?
STORY 10: “No Particular Night or Morning”
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Why does Hitchcock walk out of the spaceship?
STORY 11: “The Fox and the Forest”
Reading Check
1. Who is the stranger at the café?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Why did Ann and Roger Kristen leave their time?
STORY 12: “The Visitor”
Reading Check
1. Why is Saul Williams in quarantine on Mars?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. What is so special about Leonard Mark?
STORY 13: “The Concrete Mixer”
Reading Check
1. What do the Martians do when Ettil Vyre refuses to join the invasion of Earth?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Why does Ettil finally agree to join the invasion of Earth?
Paired Resource
“A Brief History of Sci-Fi’s Love Affair With the Red Planet”
- This article documents the history of man’s interest in Mars and discusses the role it has played in science fiction.
- This connects to the theme of Cultural Conflict and Consumerism.
- Why do you think Mars is a prominent setting in science fiction? How has man’s understanding of the red planet changed over time?
STORY 14: “Marionettes, Inc.”
Reading Check
1. Who has continuously prevented Braling from going to Rio?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. How does Smith realize that his wife Nettie is a marionette?
STORY 15: “The City”
Reading Check
1. Why does “The City” want to destroy the men who emerge from the rocket?
STORY 16: “Zero Hour”
Reading Check
1. Why are only children younger than 10 able to play “Invasion!” in Story 16?
STORY 17: “The Rocket”
Reading Check
1. Why is Fiorello Bodoni unable to ride a rocket?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. What does Bodoni do with the model rocket ship he buys from Matthews?
STORY 18: “The Illustrated Man”
Reading Check
1. What is the name of the tattooed man?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Why did the “Fat Man” decide to get tattooed?
EPILOGUE
Reading Check
1. What does the narrator see in the blank spot on the back of the Illustrated Man?
Recommended Next Reads
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- This dystopian novel explores the dangerous consequences of censorship.
- Shared themes include Technology and the Dysfunctional Family and Cultural Conflict and Consumerism.
- Shared topics include censorship and future society.
- Fahrenheit 451 on SuperSummary
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- This dystopian novel describes a world organized by a rigid social hierarchy.
- Shared themes include Technology and the Dysfunctional Family and Cultural Conflict and Consumerism.
- Shared topics include censorship and future society.
- Brave New World on SuperSummary
Reading Questions Answer Key
PROLOGUE
Reading Check
1. A witch from the future (Prologue)
Short Answer
1. The Illustrated Man tells the narrator not to look at his tattoos as he sleeps because the pictures move and reveal terrifying stories. One blank spot in particular, he explains, shows the viewer their own death. (Prologue)
STORY 1: “The Veldt”
Reading Check
1. Lions feeding in the African veldt (Story 1)
Short Answer
1. David McClean suggests that the young Peter and Wendy are preoccupied with violence to an unusual degree because they feel persecuted by their parents. (Story 1)
STORY 2: “Kaleidoscope”
Reading Check
1. A spaceship captain whose rocket explodes (Story 2)
Short Answer
1. Hollis realizes that—even though he and Lespere are both going to die in a similar way—Lespere can turn to the memories of a happy life with his many wives in the end, while Hollis can only think of what he never managed to accomplish. (Story 2)
STORY 3: “The Other Foot”
Reading Check
1. Mars, around 1985 (Story 3)
Short Answer
1. After the Black community left Earth for Mars in 1965, the white men destroyed Earth in an atomic war. They also destroyed the technology needed to leave it. (Story 3)
STORY 4: “The Highway”
Reading Check
1. The end of the world (Story 4)
STORY 5: “The Man”
Reading Check
1. Why the natives have not come to meet them upon their arrival on Mars (Story 5)
Short Answer
1. The Martian natives are not interested in the visitors from Earth because an unnamed man came to them and performed miracles the previous day. (Story 5)
STORY 6: “The Long Rain”
Reading Check
1. A hothouse warned by a mini sun (Story 6)
Short Answer
1. The four men are desperate because their rocket crashed on Venus, where it rains constantly. They have been wandering Venus for 30 days in search of a Sun Dome to escape the rain. (Story 6)
STORY 7: “The Rocket Man”
Reading Check
1. Doug, the Rocket Man’s son (Story 7)
Short Answer
1. Doug’s father is never satisfied with his life: When he is in space, he wants to be back on Earth, and when he is on Earth, he wants to be back in space. He tells Doug to avoid this pain by never becoming a rocket man like him. (Story 7)
STORY 8: “The Last Night of the World”
Short Answer
1. Everybody in the story had the same dream in which a voice told them that the end of the world is coming. (Story 8)
STORY 9: “The Exiles”
Reading Check
1. They are the final copies of Earth’s banned books. (Story 9)
Short Answer
1. The mysterious deaths of the rocket men who are flying to Mars are caused by characters from banned books who wound up on Mars after being “exiled” from Earth. (Story 9)
STORY 10: “No Particular Night or Morning”
Short Answer
1. Hitchcock needs constant proof that the world around him really exists. When he fails to achieve this proof, he puts on a spacesuit and walks out of the spaceship. (Story 10)
STORY 11: “The Fox and the Forest”
Reading Check
1. A Searcher from the year 2155 sent to retrieve Ann and Roger Kristen (Story 11)
Short Answer
1. Ann and Roger Kristen decided to escape the year 2155 into the past because their own time is destroying itself with war and censorship. (Story 11)
STORY 12: “The Visitor”
Reading Check
1. He suffers from a respiratory disease called “blood rust.” (Story 12)
Short Answer
1. Leonard Mark has telepathic powers and can make people experience being somewhere else. (Story 12)
STORY 13: “The Concrete Mixer”
Reading Check
1. They arrest him. (Story 13)
Short Answer
1. Though Ettil initially chooses to be executed instead of joining the invasion, he changes his mind when he sees his son watching him and decides to join the invasion instead. (Story 13)
STORY 14: “Marionettes, Inc.”
Reading Check
1. His controlling wife (Story 14)
Short Answer
1. When Smith comes home after talking to Braling, he puts his ear to Nettie’s chest and hears the mechanical ticking of a robot. (Story 14)
STORY 15: “The City”
Reading Check
1. It wants revenge; 20,000 years ago, men from Earth destroyed the locals with war and disease. (Story 15)
STORY 16: “Zero Hour”
Reading Check
1. Because only they have imaginations that allow them to take the game seriously (Story 16)
STORY 17: “The Rocket”
Reading Check
1. He is too poor. (Story 17)
Short Answer
1. Bodoni turns the rocket into a simulator so that he can give his children the illusion of traveling to space in a rocket. (Story 17)
STORY 18: “The Illustrated Man”
Reading Check
1. William Philippus Phelps (Story 18)
Short Answer
1. William was working at a carnival as a Fat Man, but the carnival boss threatened to fire him because they did not need a Fat Man. They would be interested, however, in a Tattooed Man, so William decided to get tattoos. (Story 18)
EPILOGUE
Reading Check
1. The Illustrated Man strangling him (Epilogue)
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By Ray Bradbury
