Pillows

What do you typically associate with pillows? Comfort? Relaxation?  Or as an AP English student do you analyze the pillow, and think of the possible implications of the feather and down components in its interior?

Well if you do that last one, you're crazy.  But I normally just like to picture that instant gratification of laying down on a pillow, that feeling of "ohhhh, I'm not getting up from here for at least an hour."  And don't get me started on the other side of the pillow.  Man, oh man, when you flip that baby over and its just the perfect cool temperature against the side of your face.  All the pleasures of life pale in comparison to that moment.  But apparently, there must be some people out there who do not associate well with pillows.  How could this be?  I do not know, but it's true I tell you!

It's true because at least two writers of literature have found it such a vile and objectionable object that it should be considered for use as a murder weapon.  Desdemona of Shakespeare's Othello suffered such a fate, as well as our dear friend McMurphy of Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  To me, it seems pretty strange that of three books we have thus far completed, two of them make prevalent a "death by pillow."  Think about it, what are the odds that two highly symbolic and unrelated deaths are attributed to a pillow and it's capacity to smother?  And why pillows?  Granted, Bromden hardly "kills" McMurphy with the pillow, as the incident was more or less an act of euthanasia to end McMuphy's post-lobotomy suffering.  But on the other hand, Othello doesn't mess around.  He smothers his wife with brute force, not once, but twice.  Even if you might think that this juxtaposition of comfort and death uniquely brought about by the pillow reveals some sort of effort by Othello to kill his wife peacefully, I'm going to have to disagree.  I can't say from experience, but I'm almost positive that suffocating to death is not pleasant in any way.  I think that this pillow murder is viscous.

So what's the connection?  Let's think of what else these works have in common... dig deep, read between the lines, push the implications... what could these two pieces of literature have in comm-- I GOT IT! MS. SERENSKY ASSIGNED THEM TO US!  Bahahaha, you thought you could stump us Ms. Serensky, but we're on to you!  I bet you're trying to sabotage us and get us to hate pillows!  Nice try, but not going to happen!