Pinkie Brown

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

Character overview

In the novel, Brown is portrayed as an up-and-coming gangster, the teenaged leader and enforcer of a powerful gang in the Brighton underworld. A violent sociopath, he takes sadistic pleasure in brutalizing and murdering people, even his own henchmen. In the beginning of the novel, he kills Fred Hale, a chronic gambler who assisted the rival gang in dispatching Brown's predecessor; that crime sets the rest of the story in motion.

Brown is an incurable neurotic. 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 idea of sin, and loathes women as the embodiment of weakness. His idea of sin is shaped by his Roman Catholic upbringing, although he often mocks the Church. He is not without normal desires, however; he wonders what it would feel like to love someone, even as he thinks himself incapable of it, and his phobia of sex does not prevent him from being as preoccupied with losing his virginity as any other teenaged boy.

Conflicts with other characters

The two main conflicts Brown is faced with throughout the course of the novel come from the two other main characters: Ida Arnold, a local busybody who wants to bring him to justice because it's "the right thing to do"; and Rose, a young waitress who falls in love with him. Brown sees in Rose the chance to experience a normal life, even though he does not really love her and looks down on her as his inferior. He is so taken with her that he brags about murdering his henchman to impress her.

Brown eventually contracts a civil marriage with Rose, mostly to make sure she doesn't go to the police. It is a dysfunctional union from the start: he degrades and abuses her, can find no common ground to relate to her on, and is sexually inadequate. Arnold appeals to Rose to leave the marriage, but Rose refuses, even though she knows deep down that her husband is a monster; a devout Catholic, she sees his abuse as a punishment for "living in sin". Indeed, she fantasizes about going to hell with him.

By the novel's conclusion, Arnold has unraveled Brown's gang and brought the police down upon him. Cornered, Brown inadvertently splashes acid in his own face while attacking Arnold, subsequently falling to his death in his pain and confusion.

In other media

Brown is portrayed by Richard Attenborough in the 1947 film adaptation of the novel.

ee also

*"Brighton Rock"
*Graham Greene