The Pillowman

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of murder (including child victims), suicide, child abuse, graphic violence (including police brutality), and mental illness.

The Pillowman, the titular character of one of Katurian’s stories, is a symbol of death as an escape from suffering. In Katurian’s story, the Pillowman’s job is to visit people who are on the verge of ending their lives, go back in time, and convince the childhood versions of themselves to die by suicide as children so as to avoid a lifetime of suffering. The Pillowman’s existence thus implies a fatalistic belief that these unhappy futures cannot be changed, only avoided. Katurian and his brother, Michal, interpret the story differently: Katurian’s understanding is that only these specific individuals are destined for misery, while Michal argues that all human lives are unavoidably miserable. The play often reiterates this idea of death as a relief from the cruelties of life. Katurian kills both of his parents to save Michal from their abuse. He kills them by smothering them with pillows, linking the event to the character the Pillowman (who is made of big, pink pillows). Katurian later suffocates Michal with a pillow to prevent him from undergoing a more painful and frightening death at the hands of Ariel and Tupolski. Even Ariel, the detective, killed his own father with a pillow in the same way. Again, this was not a malicious act but an act of self-defense meant only to prevent future suffering.