Pinkie Brown

Pinkie Brown is a fictional character, the main character and antihero in Graham Greene's 1938 novel Brighton Rock.

Character overview

In the novel, Brown is portrayed as the 17-year-old leader and enforcer of a small-time gang in the Brighton underworld that runs numbers and protection rackets for Colleoni, the local kingpin. A violent sociopath, he brutalizes and murders people, even his own henchmen, without remorse, and is incapable of feeling love or taking pleasure in life. In the beginning of the novel, he kills Fred Hale, a chronic gambler who assisted a rival gang in dispatching Brown's predecessor; that crime sets the rest of the story in motion.

Brown is depicted as severely neurotic. He regards everyone he meets with hatred and contempt, and yet envies them for feeling emotions he cannot experience. He abhors sex; as a child, he spied on his parents making love, and was both aroused and disgusted by it. He is obsessed with the concept of sin, his idea of which is shaped by his Roman Catholic upbringing, and believes himself to be pure evil. He has no friends, and has nothing but contempt for women, thinking of them as the embodiment of weakness. He is not without normal desires, however — he wonders what it would feel like to love someone, and his phobia of sex does not prevent him from being as preoccupied with losing his virginity as any other teenage boy.

Although clearly named by the other characters, within the narrative Pinkie is never referred to as such; he is only ever called "the Boy".

Role in the story

In the beginning of the novel, Brown kills Charles "Fred" Hale, a chronic gambler who helped the mob dispatch his predecessor, Kite. Soon afterward, he kills one of his henchmen, Spicer, when his alcoholism becomes a liability. He dodges the police, but makes an enemy in Ida Arnold, a friend of Hale's.

At about the same time, he meets Rose, a 16-year-old waitress at Snow's Cafe who saw him With Hale. He takes her out to make sure she doesn't go to the police, and develops a love-hate relationship with her; he is infatuated with her, even as he resents her dependence on him and looks down on her as his inferior. He eventually conducts a civil marriage with her to make sure she doesn't go to the police. The only common ground they have is their religion; they are both Roman Catholics, and therefore feel superior to the irreligious Arnold. While Arnold talks of "right" and "wrong", Pinkie and Rose discuss "good" and "evil", which they both feel is much more significant. Arnold appeals to Rose to end the marriage, but Rose refuses, even though she knows deep down that her husband is a monster. A devout Catholic, she believes the abuse she suffers at his hands is divine retribution for "living in sin", and fantasizes about going to Hell with him.

By the novel's conclusion, Pinkie decides to get rid of Rose. He tells her it is only a matter of time before he is arrested, and entreats her to commit suicide with him in the nearby moors; he plans to dispose of her body after she kills herself. Arnold arrives with a police officer just in time to save Rose, however. Brown attacks Arnold with a vial of vitriol, which he accidentally splashes in his own face. As he reels from the pain, he loses his footing and falls to his death from a cliff side.

In other media

Brown was portrayed by Richard Attenborough in John Boulting's 1947 adaptation of Brighton Rock, and by Sam Riley in Rowan Joffé's 2010 adaptation.

See also

• Brighton Rock
• Graham Greene