Discuss, in detail, how Graham Greene leads up to Pinkie’s death and say what reaction you had to his last moments of life.

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Pippa Manby LVc

Brighton Rock, by Graham Greene

Discuss, in detail, how Graham Greene leads up to Pinkie’s death and say what reaction you had to his last moments of life.

The plans carefully laid by Pinkie begin the lead up to the drama of the end of the novel.  These plans, which are misleading in that they suggest that Rose will die, start as early as the morning after the consummation of the marriage when Pinkie retains the note Rose has written.  “An obscure sense” tells him to keep this note which swears Rose’s undying love to him; thus begins the reader’s unease over Rose’s safety.  

Later on Pinkie lays more plans in the prelude to what should be Rose’s suicide.  As Rose and Pinkie depart from the tea-room where they have been having a drink Pinkie leaves clues as to his intentions, “the message at the shooting-range, at the car park: he wanted to be followed in good time”.  As he lays the clues behind him, thoughts go through his head as to what the consequences of these actions will be in the witness box at the inquest into Rose’s suicide: “something had agitated him, the witness said”.  This trail cleverly builds up the reader’s expectations that Rose’s death will occur and that the “exhilaration” which Pinkie is experiencing will continue.

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The car ride which Pinkie and Rose take to the hotel builds up the drama as Pinkie forces Rose again to promise that she means to kill herself.  This episode in the “old Morris with a flapping hood” is extremely powerful and this drama is further aided by the pathetic fallacy of the storm brewing all around Brighton, of which several mentions are made.  This appalling weather worsens as Rose’s plight does, and, in the course of the last few chapters of the novel, develops from the sight of  “the lights of Worthing- a sign of bad weather” to ...

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