Abstract
This chapter looks at the determinations of guilt and innocence and how alternative systems of justice are posited. The psychopathic Kid character in Six Shooter is as near as McDonagh’s works come to the categorical establishment of guilt. The Lonesome West is considered in relation to the implications of the religious sacrament of penance accommodating the displacement and disavowal of criminal justice. In Bruges circulates rival, comparative and incompatible systems of justice in the determination of guilt and consequential punishments. The Pillowman’s totalitarian world view teases out issues of self-defence, mercy killings, and the interfaces between guilty act and guilty mind in a world of exaggerated, false and coerced confessions.
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Jordan, E. (2019). Guilt Affirmation and Interfacing Alternative Systems of Justice. In: Justice in the Plays and Films of Martin McDonagh. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30453-9_3
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