the pillow man (pangdenomium theatre)

On Thursday, I went to watch the Pangdenomium Theatre’s The Pillowman with M. We were 20 minutes late for the show but nonetheless; we caught up with the storyline pretty quick. It was a fascinating watch and the three hours flew by in a hurry. People were lamenting that the play was too long but I thought it was necessary because it allowed the stories to be better fleshed out. I thought it was appropriate how the title of the play was also Katurian’s best (arguable) short story. Most of Katurian’s stories were bordering on sacrilegious and morbid or as it touches on child murders and torture. The theme of the dangers of literature in influencing minds seems like a constant throughout the show but I enjoyed the theme of suffering as a means to nurture artistic talents. It’s a Victorian ideal, which posits that exposure to dark thoughts nurtures a stronger and more talented artist or writer. Laid out in his partly autobiographical storytelling of his childhood, Karturian is the product of the fevered crazed minds of his stoic parents, who relentlessly tortured his older brother (Michael) as an experiment to nurture his artistic genius. His story’s ending - where Michael was no more a passing corpse with the most brilliant story he has read - deepens the relationship between artist’s suffering and artist talents. The best story written, more so better written than him, was one of sweetness and gentle but born from mindless torture and cruelty.

The motif of suffering - be it religious, artistic or circumstantial - runs deep (see Little Jesus Girl) (see the various short stories). So our titular Pillowman can travel back in time to individuals’ life (back when they were a joyful exuberant child who knew nothing about darkness and sadness) to offer them a choice to end their life before the misery and suffering they will soon face into their adulthood. Even so if they reject his kind offer, he will come back to them as an adult to assist in their suicides. At the end of the play, Karturian imagined that the Pillowman meets Michael to give him a choice: to choose to die now such that Karturian would never have to suffer the torments of listening to the next-door child’s screams, to suffer the impetus for Michael to test the realism of Karturian’s stories on little children, to suffer the likelihood of the brothers ending up in a totalitarian jail on execution row’s for child murders and to finally suffer the pillow smothering murder of his own brother. Michael didn’t chose to die and I told Matt it follows the notion of Christian suffering or God’s free will to an extent (extenuated by the story of Little Jesus Girl and the random religious/ Christian references). So even though God is omnipresent and omniscient and knowing that if he sent his son to Earth, Jesus would still died on the Cross. He still sent Jesus to Earth to give humanity a chance and a choice at redemption, which goes back to my point on how suffering works in the Christian concept. If there was no suffering, if God had not sent Jesus or if Michael had accepted Pillowman’s request to end his life, there wouldn’t have been Karturian and his stories and arguably the tender relationship between the brothers. There would be no Pillowman and none of the short stories and suffering. Likewise, there would be no crucification of Jesus (and his suffering), New Testament and I think it goes back to the fundamental Christian idea of free choice.

Sending Jesus to Earth to spread the Gospel was an effort to give humanity another choice again: you can choose to believe in the Gospel or not. Living in Earth is meant to be a form of suffering. You needed to see the darkness and suffering in order to choose to want to see the light or believe in God. As much as some teachings may emphasize on the idea that the non belief in God will cause you to go to hell, the basic premise was that you still had a choice to believe or not to believe in God. I am rambling but I think suffering in modicums is a hopeful necessity so for Michael to choose to suffer, Karturian can write his future stories. Maybe throughout the short stories and even with Pillowman burning himself, it seems otherwise and implies that the scriptwriter didn’t believe in suffering and saw that the suffering may be too much such that it endeavors and justifies the snuffing of their own lives. Maybe, the totalitarian setting and discourse on literature’s function highlights this: in perverse dictatorial period of history and humanity (suffering), it is the perseverant desire and choice to continue imagining and writing stories / art which may or may not serve any function and/or signifier in order to truthfully reflect the (sub)conscious realities of the world and narcissistic ways of Man. Maybe it is like my endeavour to write or record, they may or may not serve any function; may be lost in times but acts as a catharsis of some sorts.

I think I am rambling.

"In McDonagh's world, suffering is reality and the writer is the philosopher, whose job is to discourse on the shadows he witnesses thereof.”

- http://chicago-survey.blogspot.sg/2006/11/pillowman.html 

"Herein is contained Katurian's message to himself as a storyteller: though my stories may incite self-destruction and pain, they are truthful, and in the end, more humane than a life of untrue illusion. “ 

“Mankind thus constructs his own sense of meaning in his suffering in The Pillowman, and perhaps a way to save himself."