Prologue: The Illustrated Man Summary. The Illustrated Man - Prologue: The Illustrated Man Summary & Analysis. The sun goes down. The Illustrated Man says that at night his tattoos tell a story,with one special tattoo that tells the future of the person watching it. The Illustrated Man. The narrator meets a man while walking one afternoon. The unemployed carnival worker with tattoos all over his body has been unable to keep a job for forty years. He asks if the narrator knows where he can find a job, but the narrator does not know. The Illustrated Man then joins the narrator for the night. The Illustrated Man wishes the hated images off his body. They predict the future. At night, the pictures move. He tells the narrator an old woman, a time traveler who returned to the future made the tattoos. He wants to find her and kill her for tattooing him. This section contains 330 words (approx. 1 page at 400 words per page)