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1. I feel that the purpose of the stories is to portray how the effects of Michal's screams and torture shaped Katurian and his writing skills. Just from hearing the torture of his brother from the next door, Katurian was able to craft such deep and mysterious stories and it shows how one's surroundings is able to affect how one thinkss. Since Katurian was surrounded by so much darkness and negativity, his thoughts started to changed which led him to  kill his parents in the end although they were partially the reason why he was able to write so well. From a bright boy who was pampered and loved by his parents, Katurian gradually grew more dark due to the surrounding he was in for a long period of time.

2. I sympathize with Katurian the most as he had been living his teen life hearing the screams and torture of his brother, Michal, but was blocked and blinded from the truth by his parents. After seeing that his brother had been tortured to that state, he felt upset and sorry that his brother had to go through everything.The stories he wrote seems to represent him, especially The Pillowman. This is because the Pillowman is someone who visits people on the verge of suicide because of the tortured lives they have led. The "people on the verge of suicide" in this case is Michal as he knows that he is different from the people in society while the Pillowman is Katurian. He killed Michal as he didn't want Michal to suffer any longer. The stories he wrote are conveying the feelings he felt when he heard the tortures of Michal and writing those stories is only way of expressing his fear and allowing him to hide his fear as he was alone. He had to go through lots of mental torture since a young age. High expectations from his parents and wanting to create a perfect world, Katurian is often lonely and it mentally drains him as he only has himself to confide. Therefore, I sympathize with him because he lived a life of loneliness, fear and being apologetic.

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1) I think the purpose of telling stories is to educate the listener on the morals and values that the story wants to teach. Stories that mothers tell their children are often used as a way to bring a message across, to teach them about a certain topic. Stories like Beauty And The Beast are children's stories, and their purpose is to teach children that appearance is not everything, to not judge a book by its cover. The Pillowman is a story written by Katurian. And although it may not be aimed at young children, adults that read the story can learn something as well. They can learn from The Pillowman that adult life is miserable and killing a young person before the start of whatever misery life is going to bring may be the only way to help that person. Thus they would reconsider having children at all. They would question wether it is the right thing to do.

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1) I believe the purpose of stories is a mean for one to creatively express their thoughts. This can be seen from how before Katurian heard his brother Michal's tortured screams, he was capable of writing pure, innocent stories. Stories that start and end off with a positive note, stories that could only come from an innocent child who has not experienced the harsh, cruel world. However, after hearing Michal's screams, Katurian became influenced. Hearing those screams every night had caused him to feel negative emotions like fear and soon, his thoughts and feelings became conquered with fear and since stories are a way for us to express our thoughts and emotions, soon Katurian's stories became darker and darker. Since his brother Michal was just a child when he was tortured, it made sense that most of his stories involved tortured screaming children as for the same duration in which Michal was tortured, he was also subjected to those screams which caused the idea of tortured children to leak into his stories. Explaining why most of his stories are on tortured children and to make it worse, he was not even aware of it. This means that he has been subconsciously writing about what he felt and heard from his brother's screams. Thus this shows how the purpose of stories is for one to express their thoughts and from there we can see how one can be easily manipulated and will permanently be affected by that manipulation as seen from how even after many years, he still kept his ideas of tortured children.

2) I personally sympathize with Katurian. This is because he just wanted to live a blissful life with his brother and his own written stories. However, the stories are based on the thoughts he placed into his mind by his parents since a very young age. In order to find relief from his brother's screams and the fear he felt from them, he wrote them on paper as stories to try to let his feelings and thoughts out. However, due to that, his younger brother was influenced by his stories and feel the urge to try some of them out, which led to the killings of two children and him to be implicated. After finding out that his brother was the ones behind the killings and he was indirectly the "mastermind" for giving him "instructions" on how exactly to kill the children, he felt immense guilt that his brother would never have a peaceful life. From being tortured since he was a child till getting the death sentence and having to be shot dead from a gun, Katurian had no choice but to kill his brother himself, after reading him his favorite story that he, himself had written. So that at least his brother would die with peacefully still feeling bliss from the story. Katurian had loved his brother a lot and to be able to have the heart to kill his beloved brother caused me to pity him since he killed his entire family. It must have been really hard to have the heart to kill your parents for torturing your brother but even more so to kill the same brother you had already killed two people before for. To top it all off, during his execution, he still fondly thought of his recently deceased brother and remembered what he said from before, where he wanted a happy story where he lived. So while Katurian was thinking of a short story in dedication to Michal, the police officer, Tupolski did not keep his promise of giving him 10 seconds before shooting him in the head. As well as almost not keeping his promise of keeping Katurian's stories safe. Which is his life's work and the only memories and love Katurian have for his brother. Therefore I sympathize with Katurian as he had to kill his beloved brother who he killed their parents for as well as not being able to get what was promised from the policeman. Showing how his entire life he was being manipulated and lied to.

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I think the purpose of the stories were to emphasize the point that while they are works of fiction, they can happen in real life as well,as often fiction is based on real life. They also told us that though it is work of fiction, it should not be taken lightly with a grain of salt, just because it's "fake".there are often valuable morals and values we learn from works of fiction, anf to spread awareness of certain issues.In the play, such is the case. The brother actually carries out the murders of the little children, thinking that the stories were far fetched so he needed to try them out, after hearing the stories his brother created. His brother assumed that as it was a work of fiction, nobody would do anything basef on his works, thus creating more and mores stories that inevitably turn into actions that he and his brother regrets. However, that is not so, he is proved wrong as his brother admits to killing the children, thus showing that fiction can be expressed in real life. The opposite is true as well. Abuse of children happens in real life, so does police brutality amongst other things. This really drives home that reality and fiction can blend together and turn fiction into reality because they both happen in real life and fiction. Thus, I feel that the purpose of the stories were to warn us to not take fiction too lightly and remember that there is always something to learn from it

I sympathized with the brother, Michael the most. At a young age, he was tortured in a horrific way for almost a decade, to the point his brother describes him as "damaged beyond repair".He evidently cannot function normally like the rest of the world anymore, seen the most obviously in his insistence of telling the story of the little green pig and actually trying to make the story come true. The story of the little green pig was about a unique pig who liked himself the way he was and wished that he would always remain the same like that. In the same way, Michael is te little green pig. He knows that he is special because he cannot function the same way as other human beings like his brother ,but he wishes to be the same unique way he is because of an entirely different reason from the pig-he has a loving brother who rescued him from his torment and raised him, does everything he can to love him. His brother ,knowing that they were going to die either ways, tries to spare him the pain of execution by telling him his favourite story to coax him to sleep, before killing him the most painless way he knew -smothering him with his pillow. However, he struggled the most before he died, probably feeling betrayed that his loving brother would do this to him,not understanding the reasons behind it and thus his life ends with struggling, desperation and betrayal

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1) we can express our thoughts and feelings to other people through stories.
2) i sympathise with the character of the pillowman itself he tried to make children happy by commiting suicide in a way they would not be sad about it

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1. Stories are meant to represent life no matter its flaws or faults.
2. I sympathise with the little girl who wanted to be Jesus. There was something amazing about her entire mission to be Jesus, to the point of torture and death that was oddly touching in its foolishness.

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Share your thoughts on the two questions below (with reference to the Pillowman play):

1. What do you think is the purpose of stories? (Do you agree with what Katurian thinks of stories?)

2. Is there any character that you sympathize with? Why?