Greene’s interpretation of Ida presents her as a kind of representative for the people and of the popular world view for the readers of the novel. Ida, like Dallow only believes in what she sees, she is superstitious, being quite ready to believe in a spirit world but not, as Pinkie does, in the vision of damnation and hell fire. This is contrasted with Ida's care free approach to life, she sees it as a series of tangible pleasures to be enjoyed without feeling guilt towards an absent master - "she took life with a deadly seriousness." She has no real belief in heaven and hell and has an overwhelming sense of right and wrong, she also describes herself as a "sticker" thereby she casts herself as the avenger for Hale's death. Because of Ida's stance on religion and her superstitions, Rose and Pinkie take little notice of what advice she has for them, likening her to as being "in a strange country" without "a phrase book." Indeed Ida is not from Brighton and is only staying there because of the tip given to her by a dead man.
Throughout the novel Brighton is likened to hell, when Prewitt tells Pinkie of Mestophanes' words to Faustus: "This is Hell, nor are we out of it" the quotation expresses the thoughts which Pinkie's mind had already been thinking. We know that Pinkie relates to the thought of his Brighton as a kind of living hell because he often speaks of it as such, he wonders why he should not "have had his chance, like the rest, seen his glimpse of heaven, if it was only a crack between the Brighton walls." The future Pinkie sees for himself in Brighton is also that of a living hell, represented also by Prewitt in his settled domesticity: the wife in the basement and the girl with "grey underground skin" suggest hell just beneath this world. Prewitt, although successful has become ill and discontented, he tells the boy that his possibility of conviction is nothing compared to Prewitt's present life: "The worst that can happen to you is you'll hang. But I can rot." Prewitt is portrayed by Green as the effect of staying in Brighton to gain power (like Pinkie is doing) as if he were some kind of warning. Indeed the two are very similar to the character of Faustus himself- accepting damnation in return for rewards in this world only to find that the advantages are unsatisfying and wholly deceptive.
In every case (Prewitt's, Frank's, Nelson Place) Brighton is associated with unhappiness and failure but also with a prison-like quality. As the reader, we wonder why Pinkie does not simply leave the town and his troubled life behind: the answer being, as Prewitt's Mestophanes quote suggests, that he cannot leave. Although he has run and separated himself from his past in Paradise Place, the irony of his crimes is that, by silencing Rose, she leads him back to the slums he came from. When Pinkie returns to the poor area from which he came, he and the reader are confronted with the squalid detail of Nelson's Place and Paradise Piece. Although Pinkie despises these areas of Brighton, Green provides us with an insight into his mind: "This was his territory, a few thousand acres of houses, a narrow peninsula of electrified track running to London, two or three railway stations with their buffets and buns." Pinkie is the opposite of the travelled Dallow, to whom he says "I'd feel a stranger away from here…I suppose I'm real Brighton." Pinkie's idea of hell on earth is best demonstrated after his marriage to Rose, the vulgar domestic and sexual routines he had hitherto tried to evade have trapped him and he is left, in his mind, with only one escape route - to kill Rose. Before Pinkie visits Prewitt he envisions the kind of world described in Faustus and the horror of his present situation - "Now it was as if he was damned already and there was nothing more to fear ever again. The ugly bell chattered, the long wire humming in the hall, and the bare globe burnt above the bed - the girl, the washstand, the sooty window, the blank shape of a chimney, a voice whispered, "I love you Pinkie." This was hell then… it was just his own familiar room."
Although Pinkie is sure of his own damnation, he believes that as a Catholic he can be saved if he accepts repentance before death, an idea he constantly mentions in the rhyme "Between the stirrup and the ground, something is found." His theory is put to the test however at the racecourse when he fears he is facing death, instead of preparing to be saved by repenting his sins, Pinkie concentrates on staying alive. Greene is determined to show Pinkie as a character destined for hell, not by his actions in life but by his refusal to accept his chances for salvation which he knows are given to him. Greene employs the image of mercy trying to offer Pinkie it's hand for salvation and Pinkie describes it as trying to enter him several times, each time with more ferocity. At first, he remembers when he first met Rose that "somewhere, like a beggar outside a shuttered house, tenderness stirred, but he was bound in a habit of hate." This imagery of Pinkie as a house boarded up and his emotion begging to be allowed in represents his inability to express his feelings, which helps create the persona of a celibate and naive boy in the eyes of others. The image appears again as Pinkie almost feels protective of Rose when he hears the men in the bar boasting "Tenderness came up to the very window and looked in". The final chance of repentance which has now been twice refused this time comes most vividly as he drives from the bar with Rose to what should have been their final resting place. This time Pinkie is aware of "an enormous emotion" interpreted as "something trying to get in, the pressure of gigantic wings against the glass…If the glass broke, if the beast - whatever it was - got in, God knows what it would do." Although the phrase "God knows" is used in a colloquial manner, here it obviously has serious implications. This "beast" trying to get into Pinkie is the "crack in the Brighton walls" although when he has the chance to see heaven in Brighton, Pinkie refuses.
Pinkie's death is presented symbolically as the action of a supernatural being, punishing him for resisting salvation three times- "it was as if the flames had literally got him" the flames here from the vitriol are a metaphor for the hell fire which Pinkie was certain he'd always meet. When Pinkie falls over the cliff there is no sound of him hitting the water "it was as if he'd been withdrawn suddenly by a hand out of any existence" the "hand" is a common euphemism for the actions of God and this would certainly be fitting here.
At the end of the book Ida is satisfied that justice has been done even though she does not believe it has been done the same way Pinkie would have. It is possible to see, as Ida does, Pinkie's theology and his take on life as the fantasies of a moral imbecile, however the narrative seems to support Pinkie far more than Ida throughout the book. Ida is often described in terms of her breasts or her "Guinness voice", she has relationships with men frequently, drinks and gambles, she takes pleasure in the things described by Greene to be essentially vulgar and common. The conclusion of the novel also appears to agree with the religious rather than the materialistic and worldly outlook on life. The "hand" which appears to sweep Pinkie out of existence, for example, is not the idea of Pinkie's as we have no insight into his thoughts in death, but in the narrative - perhaps Greene's (a catholic) personal choice between the two. Just as Ida sets out to save Rose's life, Rose tries to save Pinkie's soul, if she can't do this, she would rather die with him and face damnation. This position between the two makes her the centre piece in a tug of war between the two and although she is seen as a good character, she is aware that she inhabits a place where "good and evil…speak the same language." The novel finishes with Rose telling the priest that Pinkie "was damned and he knew it", she is encouraged by the priest to have hope that he will have reached redemption in death "if he loved her." The final conclusion of the novel suggests otherwise however as Rose walks "towards the greatest horror of all" - discovering that all the while Pinkie hated her. This ending suggests that neither Pinkie nor Ida's version of life was correct, there is a suggestion though that Pinkie didn't hate Rose like he showed on the outside, when the talk of "tenderness" stirring is introduced the author hints at his real feelings. The irony is however; Rose will never know this.
Brighton provides the reader with an analogy for the potential for damnation and reprieve and a famous symbol of Brighton (and the book's title), Ida uses Brighton Rock, as a parallel for human nature. In response to Rose's desperate plea of "people change, he's changed" Ida replies: "Oh no they don't… I've never changed. I'm like them sticks of Brighton rock, bite all the way down and it still reads Brighton. That's human nature." In the case of Pinkie, Ida would stand to be correct although this is a very fatalistic view suggesting that repentance is impossible and only people who have begun good stay good. This would imply that whether one is saved or damned by God depends on what he has determined in advance to be one's character.