The worse his nightmares get, however, the better his writing gets. When he is fourteen, he discovers that his parents have been torturing his brother behind the locked door in order to make the boy a better writer. They move to another house and, years later, when the boy has published a novel, he returns to his old house and discovers the corpse of his brother lying in his bed, holding the manuscript of a story better than anything the boy has ever written.
Katurian, through narration, then explains that the end of the story is fictional. In reality, when he discovered that his parents had been torturing Michal for years, until his mind snapped, Katurian killed his mother and father by suffocating them with a pillow.
Katurian tells Michal his story, The Pillowman, which is about a man who is tasked with finding children who grow up to lead such miserable lives they kill themselves and convincing those children to kill themselves before the misery begins.
This job makes him so sad that he goes back and convinces his younger self to kill himself. This enrages Katurian, who tells Michal that he is going to go to a hell in which their parents will torture him eternally. Katurian does so, and then he suffocates Michal with a pillow. He calls for the guards and tells them that he wants to confess the truth in exchange for amnesty for his stories.
In the story, a young girl is convinced she is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. When her parents are killed in a car accident, she is sent to live with foster parents that abuse and mistreat her, but she never gives up hope. One day, they ask her if she really wants to be like Jesus.
She says she does, and they crucify her on a cross and stab her in the side. When she does not die, they put her in a glass coffin and bury her alive. Unlike Jesus, she does not rise up three days later. In the third and final act, Katurian confesses to all six murders and then tells Tupolski and Ariel where to find the third girl. Ariel leaves Tupolski alone to make arrangements for a police squad to find the third girl, in case she is still alive.
Ariel questions Katurian and discovers that he only confessed in order to save his stories. Tupolski, however, decides not to honor their agreement since Katurian was supposed to have given the truth in exchange for amnesty, and he did not tell the truth.
Tupolski executes Katurian and tells Ariel to burn his stories before leaving the room. The play ends with Ariel deciding to put the stories in the case file, where they will be stored and sealed for fifty years, rather than burning them. At the end, Katurian feels lost and defeated. He explained to Katurian that he only killed the children to see how far-fetched his stories were, and never once apologized or expressed sympathy.
Detective Ariel :Claims to be "the bad cop" at the beginning, but transforms to the more "sympathetic" cop at the end. A totalitarian, dictorial cop and a counterpart to Tupolski.
More a physical torturer than a verbal torturer. Detective Tupolski: An investigator, less violent and aggressive, but very unfeeling. A counterpart to Detective Ariel, one of the totalitarian, dictitorial cops who dominate Katurian and Michal. Tupolski is "the good cop" at the beginning, but by being a good cop he spares no feelings.
More verbal torturer than a physical torturer. Martin McDonagh makes frequent use of this classic binary in his play — in fact, the entire play seems to depend on the contradiction of good and bad. We are immediately introduced to this duo and we immediately understand their roles in the play.
Although these characters are not as deeply developed as Katurian and Michal, Tupolski and Ariel good and bad, respectively are no doubt important to the overall story. Michal is at first seen as a good and innocent character: he cooperates with the police and seems incapable of the atrocities to which he eventually confesses.
However, Michal must ultimately be considered bad — as are most serial child-killers. Again, through character development, McDonagh blurs the lines between good and bad and deconstructs the binary present throughout the play. References: 1. The Pillowman - Martin McDonagh 2. Study Guide for The Pillowman via gradesaver.
The-pillowman via Enotes. View 2 comments. Nov 28, Liz Janet rated it it was amazing Shelves: favourites. Nor is it about different forms of interrogation nor censorship. Nor is it solely on the responsibility of the author after his stories are being acted out in gruesome ways. This is a story of a writer becoming obsessed, while going interrogation, with having his stories survive his punishment.
The best part of the play, to me at least, was the short stories by the writer told throughout the play. My favourite was "The Three Gibbet Crossroads," since I am still unable to see what could be worse than rape and murder within the context. Another brilliant one was "The Tale of the Town on the River," this is how re-tellings should be done all the time.
And lastly "The Writer and the Writer's Brother," if this were a true story I would have cried even more than I did while reading it. I will read this many times over, I guarantee it. View all 3 comments. View all 19 comments. Jun 28, Rozhan Sadeghi rated it liked it Shelves: read-in-english , once-is-not-enough , e-books , ebooks-that-need-to-be-on-my-shelf , plays. Everything that is said, every line in this play has its own purpose, every story that is told in this play can be a play of its own that you have to analyse for days The themes explored in The Pillowman are universally acknowledged and understandable, yet it has something different to offer to vario 3.
The themes explored in The Pillowman are universally acknowledged and understandable, yet it has something different to offer to various people. The thing that stood out the most to me and I know for sure that is gonna boggle my mind for weeks, is the notion that is a life full of struggles with a crappy ending worth living?
The Pillowman is one of those plays that blows your mind when you read the last act and it stays with you for the days to come. View all 7 comments. Jan 22, unnarrator rated it really liked it Recommended to unnarrator by: AB. Maybe I'll sleep again someday Really, really, piercingly smart. And ghastly. Did I mention ghastly? Ghastly in that Guy-de-Maupassant-rapes-Kafka kind of way. Isn't there a reason Borges only wrote short stories? Anyway, good for you Martin McDonagh. I bet your mother thinks you're a right freakshow, now; but the rest of us applaud you for not pulling your theater-of-cruelty punches, not one bit.
View all 13 comments. Oct 22, Emma rated it it was amazing Shelves: plays. This play is amazing. I just read some of the other reviews, and "devastating" is a word that also rings true. It is so horrific, and yet so funny, that the guilt you feel when you snigger is overwhelming. Again, reflecting another review, some plays don't read well - this one does. And yet, I can also visualise it on stage. But wonder whether some sort of age limit should be given!
I was reading it with a view to assessing the proposal that our amateur dramatics group should put it on. While we This play is amazing. While we undertake to put on "Plays of Merit", and don't say anything about taste, there is an element of impropriety about this play that makes me wonder if we'd get thrown out of the theatre.
It's dark, very dark, and yet It can't be ignored because it isn't very nice The play is about a storyteller, and some of his stories, including the title story, are related over the play although told, rather than acted out.
It might seem odd, but I can imagine this working. This gets 5 stars for blowing my shoes off. Jun 14, Roya rated it really liked it. I was going to give this three out of five, since almost all of the events in the first two acts were disappointingly predictable; but the ending was brilliant, a great "twist", as Katurian would probably call it.
Not only a twist in plot, but a twist in theme , in characterization, in the whole worldview of the story. Is that even possible? Apparently, it is. Mar 21, Mia rated it it was amazing Shelves: made-me-think , favourites , i-cried , plays , dystopia , dark-grim-scary. Right, so there's a lot of places to go with this play, in terms reviewing it. Lots to work with.
Because The Pillowman is about a lot of things—rage, childhood trauma, art, violence, stories, symbolism, the subconscious. But I think I've found something which ties all of those things together, so that's what I'm going to focus on here: surrogacy. I'm not talking about having a baby for someone, I'm just using it in the general sense of the word—the state of being a surrogate.
Being a stand-in fo Right, so there's a lot of places to go with this play, in terms reviewing it. Being a stand-in for someone else. As humans, more of our lives are spent making people surrogates than we'd like to think. How often do we take our anger out on the people who don't deserve it? How often do we take a liking or a disliking to someone because they remind us of someone else? How often do we even subconsciously make others the conduit for our pent-up pain over events in the past, over the fucked-up things our parents did and said or over the way we were bullied, how often do we take that simmering rage and, when it finally boils over, direct it not at the people who hurt us but at others quite unconnected with the original act?
Quite often, I think. If this all sounds more than a bit Freudian to you, I understand. A lot of the concepts explored in this play are certainly of that nature. There's a lot of talk about childhoods and children, and all I could think about was how the act of killing a child is often imbued with such psychological and moral weight because of how the murderer sees his own self in the child, how the act is not, to him, a murder, but a mercy—how he sees himself and he destroys himself, and by doing so he tries to prevent himself from ever having existed at all because he so hates the knot of grief and rage and brokenness he was turned into because of his own childhood.
Not that I'm pardoning child murderers. Although pardoning child murderers is a very real topic in The Pillowman, which is why I brought it up in the first place.
So in case you haven't already guessed, you probably shouldn't read this play if you have any especial sensitivity regarding the death or torture of children. Well, I suppose every human person with a soul has this sensitivity, but I guess I just mean that you shouldn't read this if you can't handle that being a main component of the story. This isn't horror, so the intent isn't to frighten or repulse you, but these things certainly happen while Martin McDonagh is spinning a tale as terrible as this one.
Writing is an important motif here, unsurprisingly since the protagonist is a writer and the plot concerns the implications of his stories. But here again we find surrogacy. What is writing but extended symbolism and self-exploration? Sounds masturbatory; probably is. And violence against surrogates even runs through the subtler details of The Pillowman. Consider the tale of the Little Green Pig and the fact that Katurian works for a butcher, something which is only mentioned once in the very first scene.
Every character in this play is guilty of surrogacy to some degree. The detectives who initially seem so boneheaded and brutish reveal their internal struggles and worldviews through some fantastic dialogue and monologues, and they both have a propensity to channel their anger and grief and unleash it on people who represent those that have hurt or abandoned them. And maybe the person who creates surrogates is a victim themselves, cycles of abuse and of psychological trauma without outlet.
The world is dark, McDonagh tells you. So perhaps the candle is just there to emphasise the darkness surrounding it.
You can do so for free here. It hits you like a punch in the gut—especially the titular story—but my god is it exceptional. But I did love it. Jun 15, Amanda rated it it was amazing Shelves: plays , school. As an occasional theatre snob, I know that many plays are better seen than read. The Pillowman was not one of these, and had such an impact on me when I read it, that it stands alone as a piece of literature.
I hope to see it on stage soon I was so horrified and delighted by the events. The words toy with the reader's emotions, and made me feel terrible that I was enjoying it. The dark, twisted tales were varied, and well spaced throughout the play. My favorite being the sad tale of who the Pi As an occasional theatre snob, I know that many plays are better seen than read. My favorite being the sad tale of who the Pillowman was and what he did - not what I was expecting!
The individual stories were far fetched, but just as they came true in the novel, it is terrifying to bring to mind all the real bizarre crimes we hear about. Despite differences, the world of the play is not far enough away from real life to make a reader comfortable. Perhaps it is this discomfort that give The Pillowman its power and attraction. Dec 10, Kari rated it it was amazing Recommended to Kari by: Cari.
Shelves: drama. I don't know which theme was more exciting in this book: interrogation techniques of dictatorships, censorship, or the effects of literature on those who consume it. When I began reading this play I assumed the major theme would be the injustices suffered by the "writer" during his interrogation, and they were horrible. Then the writer become obsessed with the threat that his work will be destroyed.
This theme is strong till the end of the play. Then there is the more controversial theme: are wr I don't know which theme was more exciting in this book: interrogation techniques of dictatorships, censorship, or the effects of literature on those who consume it. Then there is the more controversial theme: are writers responsible for the actions of the people reading their works?
How much responsibility does the intellectual creator have? This play addresses all these themes and more. It is dark, funny, and wonderful. Jan 08, Gull rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites , 6-stars , horror , drama , plays. I absolutely LOVE this play! Audition Songs.
Search all audition songs. Musical Theatre. Here are some of our favorite resources to help maximize theatre e-learning and enjoyment. Shows The Pillowman. Log in to add yourself as a fan! Show Information. Martin McDonagh. Number of Acts. First Produced. Dark Comedy, Horror. Cast Size. Dramatists Play Service. Ideal for. Casting Notes. Mostly male cast Includes adult, child characters.
Synopsis In an interrogation room in an unnamed totalitarian dictatorship, Katurian Katurian, a writer, is being interrogated by two detectives. Lead Characters. Ariel The Pillowman - Play.
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