Fly A Kite Day/Photography Day/World Theatre Day
2008-03-27 @ 4:29 p.m.

Damn, I'd totally forgotten about what I said to Eugene about Michal's confusing The Little Green Pig with The Little Jesus. Here I stated that it represented a conflation of the redemptive quality of Jesus with the uniqueness of the little green pig. This statement I no longer think is entirely accurate, specifically I don't think any of this has to do with redemption anymore, although I still stand by the subsequent analysis in that entry. Here's my current take on this question that seems to bother most of my friends who've seen The Pillowman, roughly written up as a mini-essay:

Although Michal is portrayed as being intellectually disabled, there are indications in the dialogue that one cannot be too dismissive of his capacities. To begin with, after severing the Jewish boy's toes, he had the presence of mind to conceal them. Later on, Michal also lambasts Katurian for being so easily affected by a brief period of torture, whereas Michal had to endure seven years at the hands of their parents, observing wryly that it is much easier to be the one hearing the sounds of torture, and Michal imagines what it might have been like for Katurian as he was growing up. Katurian certainly feels a certain degree of guilt about the whole matter, for in The Writer And The Writer's Brother, he kills of Michal, creating a fictional reality in which their parents are unorthodox nurturers of creativity, instead of sadistic experimenters. This suppression demonstrates the ability of fiction to provide a psychological coping mechanism. In his final moments, Katurian again resorts to this, imagining that the pillowman had offered Michal a chance to avoid his life of torture, but Michal had chosen to live his life that Katurian might go on to write his macabre stories.

This brings us to the question of why Michal chose to enact Katurian's stories in the first place. Ostensibly, he did so because he despite liking them and thinking that Katurian is, or at least will be, a great writer, he doubts their plausibility in real life. This raises a question about the nature of fiction versus reality. Is one necessarily as harmful as the other? Censorship is typically practised based on the argument that being exposed to undesirable ideas, people may take it into their heads to realise them too. This, however, conveniently ignores the fact that whatever their actions, unless people claim to be of diminished responsibility due to mental illness, they ultimately have to choose to act in the ways that they do. Katurian's stories were just words on a page, with their ideas having no form in physical reality beyond those words. When Michal chose to enact them, he gave them concrete form, causing harm, potentially beyond what he had anticipated. (After all, the boy of Hamelin in Katurian's story does not die, but lives on to be the cripple who escapes the Pied Piper, whereas Michal's victim bleeds to death.)

Why, then, does Michal fail to faithfully enact The Little Jesus, instead adapting The Little Green Pig? To understand this, one must examine the symbolism of the little green pig. It represents uniqueness in an environment that celebrates conformity, and it ever wanted to be was just a bit special. Curiously, the end of The Little Green Pig has the green pig stay painted pink among his sea of now-green peers, whereas the denouement of the play reveals the mute girl was painted green and found in the company of (presumably) pink pigs. This perhaps signals that Michal has self-identified with the little green pig, and was simply acting out his favourite story, the only one of Katurian's that he would deign to save, with the mute girl acting as a proxy for himself. Yet this still fails to resolve the issue of his seeming confusion of this story with The Little Jesus.

It seems easy to dismiss Michal as simply being spiteful when he tells Katurian that it was The Little Jesus he had enacted, when he had in fact done otherwise. Nevertheless, the tenor of the dialogue sequence suggests that spite is not at play at this point in the conversation, at least not exclusively, in contrast to the sequence when Katurian tells Michal that the latter's version of Hell will consist of being taken care of by their parents for eternity with no hope of rescue. Michal is making a genuine point about Katurian's work when he points out that regardless of which story Michal had chosen to enact, the outcome would have been just as sick anyway, because that is what Katurian's stories are at their heart, twisted and warped in their worldview. A nuanced interpretation of Michal's seeming confusion offers itself when we consider the contents of the earlier portion of his dialogue with Katurian. As a writer, Katurian is aware of the power of suggestion words possess, whether spoken or written. Prior to hearing Michal's confession of murder, he is almost obsessed with the idea that all the brothers know is that the police say there have been murders. In light of this, Michal can be seen as applying his brother's reasoning, providing him with damning information (The Little Jesus) that Katurian cannot help but accept as truth in the heat of the moment because he, along with the audience, is in the dark about how events have actually played out (The Little Green Pig). This all suggests Michal operates at a level of sophistication that belies his appearance, more in keeping with Katurian's assertion that he is simply a bit slow, rather than retarded.

When Ariel chooses not to burn Katurian's stories, he is affirming a distinction between fiction and reality. What people write is not necessarily the same as what people do. Likewise, what people read is not necessarily what they must believe and practise. Tupolski and Ariel ultimately differ in their responses to Katurian's fiction. Tupolski is almost cynically dismissive. For him, the stories are a map to the killer, without any value beyond what they can tell us about the crime. The one story he responds to, in a moment of restrained emotion, is The Pillowman. Why pillows, one might ask? Pillows can be a source of comfort, disarmingly reassuring in their familiarity. Yet a pillow is used three times in the course of the play as an instrument of murder. The actual tale, The Pillowman, provides a slight twist, in which the pillowman is an indirect instrument for suicide, not murder, a distinction that Katurian points out to Michal when he says that the pillowman never killed anyone directly. Tupolski has experienced the loss of a son, and The Pillowman provides a framework in which to map his understanding of that loss.

Ariel, on the other hand, identifies closely with Katurian's gruesome tales. Being a victim of abuse himself, he is initially revulsed by the tales, populated by abused children. Yet he eventually chooses to save the stories anyway, honoring Katurian's wishes. Katurian's desperation to preserve his stories, going so far as to say that he would offer Michal to be burnt and then himself, reflects the writer's emotional investment in his work. The continued existence of the creation is a substitute to the existence of the creator. It is somewhat ironic though, that Ariel locks the stories away for 50-odd years, which suggests that he can tolerate their existence, but not their dissemination, making his act indirectly one of censorship. At the same time, this can be read as offering some measure of hope, in the sense that with the passage of time, Katurian's stories may find themselves in the new light of a world that is more receptive to the tales they weave.

So there you have it. My thoughts, organised as best I can on a Thursday afternoon for your edification. For a more lucid interpretation than mine (which admittedly isn't hard to achieve), head here.