The buer is, according to the sixteenth century magical textbook, Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, the president of hell. Pinkie, a Catholic whose belief system is characterized primarily by a morbid fascination with death and damnation, refers to Ida Arnold as a “buer,” because she seems like a demon sent from hell to punish him for his sins.
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Buer Term Timeline in Brighton Rock
The timeline below shows where the term Buer appears in Brighton Rock. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part I, Chapter 2
...before he was killed. Pinkie says there’s nothing to worry about. He calls Ida a “buer,” or demon, and insinuates that she was nothing but a prostitute. He saw Hale give...
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Part VI, Chapter 1
...that such eloquence is the result of falling for a real woman and not a buer. Buers make you want to carve their faces up, but real women inspire such poetry....
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Part VII, Chapter 2
...tells Dallow that the woman who’d come to see Rose wasn’t her mother but the buer who was with Hale in the taxi the day he died. He wonders why Rose...
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