Brighton Rock Pinkie Quotes

Steerpike is Peake's greatest creation and, ultimately, in Gormenghast he confronts that fresh embodiment of the Groan tradition, the new Lord Titus, who has come into the title prematurely as a result of Steerpike's own machinations. Steerpike has something of the knowing, reckless villainy of Richard III, something of the cold, envying evil of Pinkie in Brighton Rock, and yet we frequently find ourselves feeling sympathy with his ambitions and his conflicts. We share his frustrations, his anger, his schemes, his secrets, his knowledge of all the illusions, hypocrisies and deceits required to maintain Groan power in that seemingly limitless castle, that model of the mind, whose Gothic outlines bear only superficial resemblance to Walpole's or Radcliffe's. [...] We follow Steerpike, who uses all the quick cunning and subtle understanding, all the knowing play-acting of a Lovelace, in his rise from kitchen boy to secret power of Gormenghast. His motives are credible. Again, from the first pages, Peake has led us to understand how an intelligent youth, destined for a life of humiliation and grinding servitude, is consumed with anger at the monumental injustices upon which his misfortune and the continuing fortunes of the Groans is based. If Tolkien's hobbits display a middle-class fear of the Mob, Steerpike might be said to represent the vengeful Mob itself, all hope of justice lost, turning its ruthless fury upon those who, in their unearned, unadmitted power - no matter how innocent they seem to themselves - enjoy careless privilege. And, like the Mob, Steerpike is by no means fussy about his methods - and by no means invulnerable. Eventually common sentiment becomes both his doom and and his redemption. At the close of Gormenghast Titus begins to come into his own. Like Steerpike, he struggles against the weight of ritual and convention which imprisons him, but he struggles only to be free, not to control. He understands the price of such power and wants none of it.