I am intrigued by inconsistency of Katurian, the main character of The Pillowman. Either it is one of those plays where a different dynamic of the character is revealed with each scene, or he is a poorly constructed contradictory character. A few things that are inconsistent about him are his loyalties, his reaction to pressure, and his proficiency as an author.
In the first scene of the play, Katurian is a low status submissive character. He allows the police who are interrogating him to criticize the intelligence of his parents and (paraphrasing) “does not disagree” that they are “stupid fucking idiots.” His reluctance to defend his parents, who we later find out are quite an intelligent pair, shows his fear and makes the two police officers confident that when they knock him around he won’t fight back. Katurian further lowers his status in the eyes of the police when they are making him guess why he has been taken in for questioning. He assumes that he has been taken in because of his stories, which we later find is partially true, and that the government thinks they have some type of political undertone. With this idea in his head, Katurian starts to denounce all political writers on a long spiel about how “story tellers are meant to tell stories” and “if you have a political axe to grind, don’t do it through writing”. Katurian, with no provocation from the police officers, bashes on fellow writers in order to prove himself innocent. I interpret this as lack of loyalty not only to other authors, but also to his own work.
There is one cause in this first scene that sets Katurian off, and that is when the two police officers suggest that they have been torturing his special needs brother, Michael. Once Michael is mentioned, Katurian beefs up and gains some authority. As readers, we see that the police have finally hit home and touched upon the one thing that really matters to Katurian. He grows angry and demands to see his brother, saying he will take as much torture as they will bring, but he will not say another word until he is allowed to see his brother. In this first scene it is pretty clear that Michael is the most important thing in Katurian’s life. This also appears to be true in the second scene, however in the third it seems that his loyalty lies most deeply with his stories. In this scene, he is speaking to Michael in Michael’s cell and says if the police officer would burn two out of the three of them (Katurian, Michael, and the stories) he would have them save the stories. At the end of the play, Katurian will either be the proficient author or the guilty brother, and if he is unlucky, both. As his loyalties shift and expand through the scenes, he seems to gain courage and status. I think his fate is in his hands, though the police officers seem to think that it is in theirs. It will come down to where his loyalties lie – that will be the deciding factor of Katurian living or dying.
Katurian is also inconsistent in the way he reacts to pressure. There have been two key moments of pressure thus far in the play. The first is in the opening scene when the two police officers are interrogating him. As I have already discussed, Katurian is generally submissive in this scene. He lacks the courage or motivation to stand up for anything important in his life until his brother Michael is mentioned. In this instance, Katurian displays indecisiveness. He does not do anything to help him out of this vulnerable position he is in (until Michael is mentioned and he takes some authority). The second moment of pressure is a flashback to Katurian’s childhood. His parents have seen his potential as a writer, so they spoil him and love him and treat him with the utmost care. One day, he finds that the room next to him, which he always believed to be empty, was where they keep and torture his special needs brother, Michael. This is the second moment of crisis in the play. Instead of approaching the situation passively as Katurian from the first scene would have, he walks into his parents’ bedroom and swiftly suffocates each one with a pillow. From one point of view, his behavior is consistent in that Michael is his constant motivator for Katurian to take action. On the other hand, his ability to react so decisively as a child contradicts his non-confrontational nature as an adult. In which instance does he act with grace under pressure? He never shows remorse for murdering his parents. In fact, he implies when talking to Michael in the third scene that he does not believe this act will send him to hell. Child Katurian from scene two shows that he can swiftly make a decision that he never comes to regret. Adult Katurian lowers his charactorial status through his lacking decisiveness. Though Child Katurian committed the heinous crime of killing his parents, it seems that in context, this was his more graceful moment of the two. Does this mean that with age, he is losing the ability to act in the moment? Or maybe it is merely he cannot physically see Michael’s pain in this second moment of pressure, so he is less inclined to make a dramatic gesture. Either way, it is clear that Katurian’s reaction to pressure develops with time.
One final element of Katurian’s character that I am grappling with is how good of a writer he truly is. Or, perhaps, how much faith the author of the play, Martin McDonagh, has in him. In my experience as a reader, when an author wants to emphasize the skill of an author in their story, he chooses to omit the actual stories the author writes, and instead just describe around his or her work. McDonagh on the other hand goes straight for the money and has Katurian read his best story aloud to the police officers in the opening scene. Maybe this is just a representation of McDonagh’s confidence in his own literary craft, however it automatically belittles the skill of Katurian. The plot of the story he reads aloud is creative and edgy, but the story itself is nothing special. This story, his best story, was the only one that was ever published. That also seems curious to me. When a short story is published, it is almost always vastly changed by the editors and the magazine after it is signed over. Short story authors with whom I have spoken usually say that they learn to separate themselves from the work that they publish. This way, they are not emotionally distraught when they see the changes in the final piece. The work that they truly value as art is the stuff that they write for themselves. This is why it seems curious to me that Katurian’s favorite work of his is his one published work. It seems, dispassionate, to me. When paired with his questionable loyalty (to Michael or to his stories) it is hard to measure if he is all that skilled or all that passionate of a writer. This too will play into the decision he makes in his final moment of pressure that I predict will come at the climax of the play.
The loose strings of Katurian’s character make me curious. There is a chance that they keep me reading, but they also make me question McDonagh’s credibility as an author because I cannot yet figure out if these slightly contradictory pieces of his character are purposeful or accidental. I assume that the climax of the play will reveal my answer. I am slightly hesitant, but mostly eager, to keep reading because I really do like the play so far and don’t want to be disappointed. I guess there is only one way to find out…
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