Thoughts about The Pillowman (Part IV)

Hey all:

Some more thoughts about Martin McDonagh play.......I have been excited by your reactions so far to this play--some say that this is the most enjoyable work that you have read so far in this class. Okay, so you like plays about child murderers. No judgement here.

Act Two Scene Two

"The Little Jesus" story is another horrific, somewhat (darkly) humorous play in which a little child believes that she is Jesus and desires to go through all of the torture that the historical Jesus went through. Why is this story here? How does this have to do anything with the play? Is it just, and sorry Rob who in your post seems to be a devoted follower of the series, just like Saw or Nightmare on Elm Street or any other typical slasher film--the story is just here to show how cool a gruesome murder is? And is McDonagh just raising the stakes a bit by having the main character to be a little girl (and therefore our sympathies are prodded)?  Why does this story go right after Katurian kills his brother? Sure, it is part of the plot but why act it out?

Well, let's look at the story--in the end after all the suffering, the little girl still has belief that her torture will lead to something (a new world order which the rise of Christianity brought to the world)? And she is determined to suffer and go through it all (almost enjoying it to a certain extent). But the ending, with the scratching and clawing of the coffin shows that there is no resurrection, that the rising of the girl will not happen and the girl began to lose faith at the end and didn't trust that she was the actual Christ.  Hmm....so is this a bleak story? (um, yeah, duh.) But is there any hope in this story at all? Well, yes, there is. The real girl, Maria, wasn't the little Jesus but was actually covered in green paint and allowed to play with piglets (I know, this is a strange play). So the one story that Katurain writes that doesn't end in murder is the final story that the brother acts out. 

Why? I was happy reading this and to not see another child dead on the page (call me sentimental). But how does this fit into the greater question of the power of stories? Do bad stories in which there is death and destruction affect people to go out and act them out? In other words, do violent video games, for example, cause children to bring guns into schools and shoot people? Do nice stories cause people to do nice things?

Or is it all how you read them? The Pillowman story is actually a "nice" story to Tupolski because it allows him to get comfort when thinking about the death of his own child. It is a disturbing story to others, however, and would probably be banned from various media outlets as being dangerous. Does this play enter into a conversation, then, about the role of censorship in our society (or a totalitarian state). Do words kill? Should words be seen as dangerous as a person wielding a gun? Should we burn the stories that could lead people to harm others? Where do we draw the line?

I'm running now to get to one of the ten meetings I have today, so I have to go, but I really hope that we can sit around and talk about these large issues......see you later!