“The Illustrated Man” by Ray Bradbury is a marvelous book that immediately pulls you in. This book is about a man whose body is covered in “living” tattoos, but the strange part is that his tattoo’s tells stories of the future. The book isn’t a story about the man himself, but a book about his tattoos; it is 18 stories compiled into one book. Bradbury’s book tells interesting and imaginative tales about the very eerie future, about space and Martians, and about death.
The first story in this book is the one that interested me the most. The reason it stood out to me more than the rest is because it doesn’t talk about space, or Martians, but of the eerie future. This story tells of a future where people don’t have to do anything, the machines do everything for you, and your imagination can dictate what happens. …show more content…
Martians. These two things are the majority of the book. Some of these “space” stories were interesting but after a little while, reading about space, Martians, Mars, and Venus became just a little boring. The excitement seemed to fade with each story.
I love how Bradbury used his words in “The Illustrated Man”. Some of the sentences were so descriptive I felt like I was there. “The first concussion cut the rocket up the side with a giant can opener. The men were thrown into space like a dozen wriggling silverfish.” (Bradbury, 19) .Those two lines from the story “Kaleidoscope” are my favorite. Those lines immediately pulled me in and didn’t let me go until the end of the story.
Death seemed to be the main subject in this book. “Johnson fired his gun three times more. . . They ceased struggling. There was a terrible silence.” (Bradbury, 137). In every single story, someone always seemed to die. Whether it was from hatred, natural causes, rocket crashes, or murder, death was always present. I know death has to happen, but this book took death to the extreme and cannot say that I enjoyed reading about