Analysis of The Pillowman – play reviews or literary criticism

Analysis of The Pillowman – play reviews or literary criticism

Write a well-researched and well documented literary analysis of The Pillowman. This paper uses play reviews or literary criticism to support.

Analysis of The Pillowman-play reviews or literary criticism

Write a well-researched and well documented literary analysis of The Pillowman.

You will use your own logic and analysis to focus on one or more areas of your choosing, and you will use secondary sources like play reviews or literary criticism to support.

The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh is a play about Katurian. It is a fiction writer who lives and works in a police state. As his stories are similar to several murders, the police interrogates him. In 2004, McDonagh received an Olivier Award in the Best New Play category, a New York Drama Critics’ Award for Best New Foreign Play, as well as two Tony Awards. It premiered in 2003 at the Cottesloe Theatre in London. The Pillowman falls into the sub-genre of black comedy.

In the first act,  Ariel and Tupolski interrogates Katurian. Initially, Katurian thinks they’re investigating him because of suspicions that he’s using his fiction to spread political messages speaking out against the totalitarian dictatorship. Ariel leaves the room, and Katurian hears screaming from the other side of the wall. When Ariel returns, hand covered in blood, Ariel says that Michal has confessed to murdering three children—with Katurian. He denies it. Reminding his interrogators that while his stories are gruesome, it’s his job as a storyteller to tell a story; this is not indicative of his being a murderer—even though the details of two of the murders match two of his stories, “The Little Apple Men” and “The Tale of the Town on the River.”

Katurian used to write happy stories. But after he heard someone being tortured at night, his stories took a disturbing turn. He receives a message that for the last seven years, he’s been subjected to his brother’s torture to force him to become a better writer.