Summary
Michal asks Katurian to tell him the story about the little green pig, then tells him that he forgives him for all the mean things he said. Katurian tells the story about the glow-in-the-dark bright green pig. The pig liked being green, but got bullied by the other pigs. One day, the farmers dragged the green pig and dunked him in pink paint that could never be painted over or washed off.
That night storm clouds gathered overhead and poured special green rain on all the other pigs. The next morning, all the pigs woke up to find that they had been turned green, while the original green pig remained pink, because the special paint could not be painted over. As Michal drifts off to sleep, Katurian takes a pillow and smother Michal with it. "Sweet dreams, little baby. I'll be coming along soon," he says, weeping. Once Michal is dead, Katurian kisses him on the lips and bangs on the door, telling the detectives that he wants to confess to the murders, on the condition that he can do so using his stories.
Scene 2. Katurian tells a story, as a girl and her parents act it out. The story is about a six-year-old girl who believes that she is the second coming of Jesus. She goes around blessing people and hanging around with people who are down-and-out. One night, the girl sneaks out of the house. Her parents get a call from their priest telling them that their daughter is down at the church giving them a hard time, and they set off to find her. On the way to the church, the parents hit a meat truck, get beheaded, and die. The girl cries one single tear, before getting sent to live with abusive foster parents who hate religion. They beat her for nearly everything. One day, the girl meets a blind man (played by Katurian) and tries to cure him with dirt and spit, but it does not work.
The mother embeds a crown of barbed wire thorns in the girl's head, and her father whips her. Then, they make her carry a heavy cross on her back and make her hang from it, nailing her to it, before sticking her with a spear. The next morning, the girl is not dead and forgives the foster parents, but they put her in a coffin and bury her alive. The blind man walks past the grave, but cannot see it, and so does not let the little girl out.
Act 3. Katurian writes a confession and hands it to Tupolski, while Ariel smokes nearby. Tupolski reads the confession, in which he confesses to the murder of his brother and parents, as well as the three children Michal killed. He then gives them a map to where they can find the girl he killed in the style of the Jesus story. Tupolski leaves, as Ariel reads his confession.
"Do you really think we're not going to burn every one of your stories the minute we kill you?" he asks. Katurian replies, "I've confessed to everything truthfully, just like I promised I would. And I believe that you'll keep all my stories with my case file and not release them until 50 years after my death, just like you promised you would."
Katurian keeps writing, as Ariel asks him why he killed his mother and father, and Katurian points him to "The Writer and the Writer's Brother." He tells him that he buried his parents behind the wishing well behind their house. Even though Ariel makes it seem like they are not going to preserve his stories as promised, Katurian says he trusts them to do the right thing. Ariel goes on a rant about how much he hates people who hurt children, and that the only reason he uses force as a detective is because he does not want children to get hurt. "Little kids are gonna follow me around and they're gonna know my name and what I stood for, and they're gonna give me some of their sweets in thanks, and I'm gonna take those sweets and thank them and tell them to get home safe, and I'm going to be happy," he says.
"I may not always be right, but I stand on the right side. The child's side. The opposite side to you," he says. As he goes to torture Katurian, Tupolski enters and interrupts. "Were you doing your 'Children are going to come up and give me sweets when I'm an old man' speech?" Tupolski says, impatiently.
Ariel calls Katurian over and tells him to kneel, as Katurian says, "And who was the first one who told you to kneel down, Ariel? Your mum or your dad?" Tupolski is shocked and asks Ariel if he told Katurian about his fucked up childhood and the fact that his father sexually abused him. Tupolski says he is bored with everyone talking about their bad childhoods, and that he is a violent alcoholic like his father, but that it is his "personal choice."
Ariel connects the electrodes to the battery to torture Katurian, as Katurian asks him more about his father, whether he is in prison. Tupolski tells him that Ariel's father is not in prison because they could not arrest him. Just as Ariel is about to connect the torture device, Tupolski tells Katurian that Ariel murdered his father by smothering him with a pillow before they could arrest him.
Tupolski tells Ariel to disconnect Katurian from the machine and they argue about who ought to be in charge of the case.
Analysis
In this section, Katurian tells one of his only pleasant stories. While it is still peculiar, the story of the green pig is a rather innocent and lovely tale about a pig who values that which makes him different. Unlike Katurian's other stories, which involve death, lost innocence, and grisly tales seemingly without a moral, the tale of the green pig presents a story that suggests that everyone ought to value that which makes them different from others, and to trust in their place in it.
The relief from disturbing content does not last long. No sooner has Katurian finished telling his story than he smothers Michal with a pillow, killing him just as he killed their parents. Pushed into a desperate situation by his brain-damaged brother's poor decision-making, Katurian feels he has no choice but to kill his brother and take the fall for his deeds. Throughout his life, Katurian has had to make horrifying decisions all for the sake of minimizing harm in an unjust world.
This is followed, predictably, by yet another very disturbing story, about a young girl who is abused and eventually buried alive by her foster parents. Making Katurian's stories all the more disturbing is the fact that actors portray the action in real-time as he narrates them. We must watch the grisly tales acted out, lending them an even more ominous quality. McDonagh uniquely blends the macabre with the quirky, sewing sick jokes into his horrifying stories of abuse and violence, as if to remind the audience just how complicated and difficult life can be.
In the scene in which Ariel is alone with Katurian, we see that the detective imagines himself to be unequivocally on the side of good. He describes the world in binary terms, suggesting that, even if he may not always be right and even if he uses excessive force, he is on the side of good, because he fights to make sure children do not get hurt. In his imagination, there are two sides: the side of children and side of people who hurt children, and there is no ambiguity. While Katurian is on the side of moral ambiguity, Ariel sees his moral universe in black and white.
The theme of parental abuse and inherited trauma is reflected in both Tupolski and Ariel. Ariel's stark thinking about child abuse and his desire to torture Katurian comes from the fact that he was sexually abused by his father throughout his childhood and smothered his father to death in much the same way Katurian killed all of his family members. Tupolski does not put much stock in the notion of inherited trauma, but admits that he shares a violent alcoholism with his father. As the questioning continues, we learn that Katurian and the two detectives in charge of his case share traumatic and abusive pasts, which they struggle to reconcile with their adult lives.
