Comparing The Pillowman And The Seven Psychopaths

Martin McDonagh is well known for his controversial dark humor works set in Ireland. The Pillowman was the first play not set in Ireland and lead to various other works set outside of Ireland. Across McDonagh’s many successful works, one very similar aspect is the prevalence of violence portrayed. Out of all the plays and movies he wrote, the Pillowman and the Seven Psychopaths are two that are very similar. Although they were written about a decade apart, they both have a story telling a story with a similar message using violence. The Pillowman is a play about a writer, Katurian Katurian Katurian, who gets arrested for the murders of children who are murdered like the characters in his stories. Seven Psychopaths is a movie told in a similar way about a screenwriter, Marty Faranan, who is struggling with writing his latest film about psychopaths and killers but wants the message to be about love and peace.
Despite numerous criticisms about how the play was violence was “gratuitous”, McDonagh says, “The violence has a purpose . . . otherwise there’s nothing particularly interesting about shooting people on stage.”

These stories are being told to us in the media and we believe them as they’re being told but the actual content of them are questionable whether or not they are trustworthy. Likewise, the stories told in The Pillowman are questionable in content. The story about the Writer and his Brother was told untruthfully in the Pillowman. The details were altered to tell an alternative story. The real story is Katurian is the writers and his brother is Michal but he wrote it with Michal being the writer and himself as the brother. This unveils the problem that reality is constructed through media. The abuse of the brother incorporated in the story was the violence element being used to portray the constructed reality in the