37 pages • 1 hour read
Martin McDonaghThe Pillowman
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Act IIChapter Summaries & Analyses
Act II, Scene 1 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence (including police brutality), murder (including child victims), sexual abuse, suicide, ableism, and religious discrimination.
Michal is in an interrogation room alone. He can hear Katurian screaming from the other room, which annoys him. Ariel throws Katurian in the room with Michal and leaves the brothers alone together. Terrified and in pain from being tortured, Katurian is so relieved to see Michal that he latches onto his leg. Michal is completely unbothered by the entire ordeal—he is “[j]ust a bit bored” (27). Katurian questions Michal about Ariel torturing him, as he had heard Michal screaming earlier. Michal responds that the officer didn’t hurt him at all. He simply said whatever Ariel wanted him to, and he screamed only because Ariel told him to. Katurian tells Michal to promise he didn’t murder the three children, and Michal promises he didn’t. Realizing Ariel lied about torturing Michal, Katurian starts to wonder whether anything the officers said is true at all. He wonders whether Michal actually confessed to the murders, or whether the murders even happened. Katurian and Michal both read about the murders of two children in the news, but in the totalitarian state they live in, the news is controlled by the police. Michal seems to agree with his brother that they can’t trust what the officers say.
Michal complains that his “arse is really itchy today” (29), and he asks Katurian to tell him a story to take his mind off it. Katurian recounts a story he wrote called “The Pillowman.” The story is about a huge man made of pillows. The Pillowman’s job is to visit people who are about to die by suicide, take them back in time to their childhoods, and convince the child versions of themselves to die by suicide before their lives get worse. This way, the Pillowman prevents lifetimes of suffering and pain. The Pillowman visits one young girl who refuses to take her own life, not believing that she has a lifetime of suffering ahead of her. After the Pillowman’s visit, a man starts to sexually abuse her. At 21 years old, she dies by suicide. The Pillowman decides that his job is too tragic to endure, so he goes to visit the childhood version of himself. He convinces his childhood self to die by suicide. As he’s dying, the Pillowman hears the screams of all the children he’s convinced to end their lives “coming back to life and going on to lead the cold, wretched lives that were destined to them because he hadn’t been around to prevent them” (33).
When Katurian finishes telling the story, Michal says that he doesn’t know how the police found the little boy’s toes, because he had hidden them thoroughly. Shocked, Katurian asks him what he’s talking about. Michal goes on to describe in detail how he murdered two small children exactly as Katurian describes in his stories. Katurian is extremely distraught and begins to cry. Michal, unaffected, tells Katurian that he’s the one who told him to commit the murders—he was merely “testing out” Katurian’s stories. Michal says that Katurian is mostly to blame for the murders, since he’s the one who wrote the stories. Michal also likens himself to the Pillowman, explaining that every child is bound to have a miserable life. Katurian disagrees. Overcome with grief and anger, Katurian yells at Michal for being so depraved, grabs his head, and slams it into the floor. Michal accuses Katurian of being just like their parents. Katurian counters that Michal is the one who is similar to them. Katurian asks Michal what he did to the third child, and Michal says he killed her in the same way a little girl dies in Katurian’s story “The Little Jesus,” a particularly dark and gruesome story.
Katurian and Michal argue over Katurian’s story “The Writer and the Writer’s Brother.” Michal is insulted that his character dies in the story, but Katurian says that the story has a happy ending for Michal, since Michal turns out to be “the Writer.” Katurian explains that the legacy one leaves behind is more important than life or death. He vows not to let the officers burn his stories even if they execute him. There’s a mattress in their cell, and Michal lies down to take a nap. Katurian tells another story to help his brother fall asleep. This one is called “The Little Green Pig.” In the story, a bright green pig lives surrounded by regular pink pigs on a farm. The other pigs make fun of the green pig, but the green pig enjoys being different. His color bothers the farmers, so they dye the green pig pink with a permanent dye, which saddens him. That night, a strange storm comes and rains down permanent green paint on all the other pigs, and so the newly pink pig remains different from the others.
Michal is asleep when Katurian finishes the story. Katurian strokes Michal and forgives him for his mistakes. Crying, Katurian holds a pillow over Michal’s face until he suffocates. He then calls out to the officers that he is confessing to the murders of six people, on the condition that the officers save his stories after he is executed.
Act II, Scene 2 Summary
Katurian narrates his story “The Little Jesus.” In the story, a young child believes herself to be the second coming of Jesus. She wears sandals and a beard and walks around bad parts of town blessing addicts and the homeless. One day, the girl’s parents are killed in a car accident, so she is sent to live with foster parents who are cruel and abusive. A while later, the girl comes across a blind homeless man whom she tries to heal by rubbing spit and dirt in his eyes. The blind man reports her to the police. As punishment, the girl’s foster parents crucify the girl exactly like Jesus Christ. They nail her to a wooden cross, stab her in the side, and bury her alive. The girl is certain she will rise from the grave in three days. Three days after she is buried, a man comes along her gravesite, where the girl is still alive. Because he is blind, he doesn’t see the grave and continues on, leaving the girl to die.
Act II Analysis
The Pillowman as a character in Katurian’s story is a symbol for the tragic idea that death can be a comforting release from the horrors of life. Through this figure, the play introduces the idea that death, even by homicide, can be an altruistic act. Michal thinks of the Pillowman as a parallel of himself, since he also murdered children, but, as Katurian puts it to Michal, “The Pillowman was a thoughtful, decent man, who hated what he was doing. You are the opposite, in every respect” (36). Michal and Katurian understand the story’s fatalism in different ways. In Katurian’s interpretation, certain individuals are destined for misery; in Michal’s interpretation, misery is the common destiny of humanity. Neither interpretation is more correct than the other, and Michal’s alternative reading makes clear that the author is not the sole or even the preeminent authority on the meaning of his own work. Importantly, Michal’s interpretation justifies his killing of children: If every child will eventually live a miserable life, then killing a child arguably has no negative ethical consequences. This viewpoint speaks to The Impact of Abuse and Trauma on Michal’s psyche. Katurian is akin to the Pillowman, as he regretfully kills Michal as a way to save him further suffering. The analogy is strengthened by the fact that Katurian uses a pillow to suffocate Michal. McDonagh uses imagery like “fluffy pink pillows” to instill the ironic association of pillows with comfort, home, and childhood, which are basic luxuries Michal was never afforded. Tying Katurian’s role to the Pillowman’s also reinforces the idea that Michal is like a child. He is innocent and needs to be protected, like the children the Pillowman tries to “save.”
Michal has a mental capacity equivalent to that of a child, and the fact that Ariel and Tupolski fail to even acknowledge this is evidence of the danger of authoritarianism. They are more concerned with exerting power and control than with what is truly fair, or even true. The officers manipulate and lie to Michal and Katurian, pretending to torture Michal only to extract a confession out of Katurian that meets their constructed narrative. Ariel and Tupolski’s excessive force is an example of the cycle of abuse, as both men were abused by their fathers when they were young. Consequently, as adults, they abuse and traumatize others.
Katurian’s extreme views on art are clarified by his stance that he will sacrifice his life if it means saving his stories. Since they are living under a totalitarian regime that favors censorship, he knows that the officers are likely to burn his stories. Even knowing that his stories played a part in two children’s deaths, Katurian still believes they have a right to exist and be seen. Again, this reinforces the idea of art having inherent value, unrelated to both the artist’s intent and the effects it has on people and in the world.
The scene in which Katurian kills Michal is an allusion to John Steinbeck’s classic 1937 novella Of Mice and Men. The book is about a pair of friends who have a brotherly relationship, George and Lennie, the latter of whom is mentally disabled in a very similar way to Michal. Like Michal, Lennie ends up killing a woman out of a mere lack of understanding. Like Katurian, George knows that Lennie will inevitably face a painful death as a result of his crime, so he resolves to kill Lennie as painlessly as possible. The respective scenes in each work bear striking similarities—just like Katurian lovingly tells Michal a calming, pastoral story about pigs to distract and comfort him, George tells Lennie his favorite story about rabbits on a farm to divert his attention right before shooting him in the head. McDonagh’s allusion to this book furthers the play’s exploration of censorship and authoritarianism because Of Mice and Men, while critically acclaimed, is one of the most commonly banned books due to its violence, profane language, and portrayals of racism and ableism.
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By Martin McDonagh
