Illustrated Man

In the prologue of Ray Bradbury’s famous collection of stories, The Illustrated Man (1951), a stranger covered in tattoos meets our narrator, a man taking a “walking tour of Wisconsin.” The tattooed man explains that his tattoos predict the future, and that at night, the figures change to reveal at times a violent death ahead for someone the Illustrated man has recently met. In fact, anyone who sits with him long enough will see his or her fate unfold on the man’s skin. And people don’t like it, whatever it is that awaits them. They see themselves and their future in the shifting ink and either flee or demand that the Illustrated man leave immediately.

Bradbury’s painted character addresses the nature of fate, the way things are, a common subject even among the ancients like Sophocles in Oedipus the King (429 BCE) or the Roman Epicurean, Lucretius. But is this the nature of tattoos? Do they tell us who we are or what we will be? Does a butterfly shifting with each stride along the curve of someone’s spine say who that person is? What about a flaming skull burning down that man’s shoulder? A tattoo artist I knew in Raleigh many years ago received classical training in the arts. His work was exceptionally detailed and nuanced, and he refused service to the random fraternity brother who wanted a Yosemite Sam tattoo. I’m not sure if doing that kind of artwork were beneath the artist, or he guessed the brother would regret getting Sam as a permanent mark (pretty sure it was the former), but he had high standards. Another artist I know has ink on both sides of her head, including ancient text along her face. I don’t know her well, but she seems to be a kind, genuine, and wise person. She tells me of moms uttering words of horror when they see her. I imagine maternal arms wrapping and pulling gawking children close to maternal breasts. That tattooed woman must be wicked, I hear them saying.

But hey, I guess that’s just the way things are.