Both her naive optimism, which has 'something dangerous and remorseless' in it, and her spiritual blindness prevent her from understanding Pinkie and Rose and account for the ironic tone that dominates many of the descriptions of Ida: Ida Arnold was on the right side. she took life with deadly seriousness: she was prepared to cause any amount of unhappiness to anyone in order to defend the only thing she believed in. Life was poor Fred's mouth pressed down on hers in the taxi, vibrating with the engine along the parade. Life was sunlight on brass bedposts, Ruby port, the leap of the heart when the outsider you have backed passes the post and the colours go bobbing up. but to her death was the end of everything. She didn't believe in heaven or hell, only in ghosts, ouija boards, tables which rapped. The dark side, both of life and of the city with its beggars and its crime, is completely alien to her :ĭeath shocked her, life was so important. Brighton for her is a place of fun and excitement, and life is always 'good' : 'I always say it's fun to be alive'.

Like Mather, Ida, despite fulfilling the role of the detective, is mocked by the narrative: her inability to see beneath the surface of things severely limits her understanding of the case and of the world she inhabits. Responding to an irrational compulsion-she calls herself a 'sticker where right's concerned' -she investigates Hale's death, seeking to bring Pinkie to justice and to save Rose the suffering that Pinkie will inflict upon her. Order custom essay Brighton Rock by Graham GreeneĪnalysis In Brighton Rock Pinkie's gang murders Hale but only after he has made the acquaintance of Ida Arnold, a fun-loving pragmatist who repeatedly insists on her knowledge of the difference between right and wrong.

Brighton rock greene