AQA GCSE in English Literature · Free · no account needed

Brod (Broderick) in Leave Taking — character analysis

Leave Taking · Winsome Pinnock · Set text on AQA GCSE English Literature (8702) — Modern texts option; not on Pearson Edexcel International GCSE (4ET1) · Grade 9 Notes

In one sentence. The family friend who carries the history Enid will not tell

Brod is Enid's friend from their childhood in Jamaica and the only man in the play. He appears in three scenes, two in Enid's flat and one in Mai's bedsit, but his effect is large. He is funny, teasing and a heavy drinker. He also voices the play's sharpest criticism of Britain: he grew up thinking of himself as a British subject, and now has a letter from the authorities saying that unless he gets his nationality papers in order he can be put out of the country, so he keeps his Jamaican passport up to date. He tells the story of Gullyman, a friend who tried to speak like the English and broke down after racist abuse. He blames colonialism for Jamaica's poverty and insists that Enid's daughters must know where they come from. In Scene Seven, thrown out by Enid, he tells Del the truth about her father.

Build your reading of Brod (Broderick) in Leave Taking, teach it to an AI pupil, then defend it in a marked debate — this study carries all three.

How Brod (Broderick) develops

The joker with a grievance

Brod arrives in Scene Two for the pastor's visit and immediately teases Enid, joking about her feet, which carry the marks of the hard labour of her childhood. His humour reminds her, and the audience, of the life she came from.

Key moment. Brod describing the letter that told him to get his nationality papers in order or be put out of the country (Scene Two). A man raised to think of himself as British is told by Britain that he may not belong. The letter turns Brod's loyalty into bitterness and is why he keeps his Jamaican passport ready.

Key moment. Brod telling the story of Gullyman, who tried to speak like the English and broke down after racist abuse (Scene Two). Gullyman is a warning told as a story: trying to become English did not protect him. Through an offstage character Pinnock shows the damage racism does to a mind.

The keeper of history

Brod argues with Enid about the girls. Where she is proud of her English daughters, he says that at heart they are Caribbean and that she is teaching them wrongly, letting them forget where they come from. He asks Viv about Nanny of the Maroons, the warrior leader of Jamaicans who resisted the British, and he puts Jamaica's poverty down to colonialism.

Key moment. Brod and Enid, after the pastor has gone, remembering church services back home in Jamaica (Scene Three). The memory shows what the two migrants share and what England's version of their faith lacks for Brod. It is a brief moment of home before the phone call that ends the scene.

His drinking is part of the same picture. Brod's jokes cover isolation and hurt, and the drink is one of the ways he copes with being rejected.

Telling Del the truth

In Scene Seven Brod wakes in Mai's bedsit after a night's drinking. Enid has thrown him out, as she has thrown out Viv. He is at his lowest.

Key moment. Brod telling Del that her father, treated with contempt at work, became violent towards Enid, and that Enid left to protect her girls (Scene Seven). Brod explains without excusing. He shows how racism damaged her father and how the damage was passed on to Enid, and he forces Del to see her mother as someone who protected her.

How Pinnock builds Brod on stage

Brod is the play's comic voice: teasing, boastful and fond of drink, with a broad Jamaican way of speaking.

He is a storyteller who brings offstage people onstage through anecdote: Gullyman, Enid's childhood, Del's father.

Structurally he appears in three scenes, and each time he reveals something Enid has kept hidden.

Brod in context

His letter from the authorities shows how the right of the Windrush generation to remain could be questioned.

His talk of colonialism and of Nanny of the Maroons brings Jamaica's history under British rule into the play.

Relationships

  • Enid — His oldest friend, whose past he knows and whose loyalty to England he mocks.
  • Viv — The daughter he teaches about Jamaica and its history.
  • Del — The daughter he tells about her father.
  • Gullyman — The friend whose breakdown is Brod's warning about trying to become English.

What Brod (Broderick) stands for

  • The letter: the state's message that his belonging can be withdrawn.
  • The Jamaican passport: a way out kept ready.
  • His drink: the hurt behind the jokes.

Why Pinnock made Brod (Broderick)

  • To voice the anger of a migrant generation that was told it belonged and then told it did not.
  • To bring Jamaica's history, and the history of colonialism, into the play.
  • To reveal Enid's past, which she will not tell herself.

Readings you could defend

More than one reading of Brod (Broderick) can win the debate. These are the credible alternatives — argue one, and know the others.

  • A comic figure whose jokes carry the play's most serious political criticism.
  • A substitute father to the girls, giving them the history their own father could not.
  • A man broken by rejection, whose drinking shows what Enid's composure hides.

Essay arguments

  • Pinnock gives Brod the role of witness: he carries Enid's history and Britain's colonial history into a flat where neither is spoken of.
  • Brod's letter from the authorities makes the question of belonging legal as well as personal, which is why the play still speaks to later events.
  • Brod is funny, and Pinnock uses his humour to make an audience listen to criticism it might otherwise resist.

Brod (Broderick) in theme essays

  • Racism: the letter, Gullyman, Del's father.
  • Identity: the girls' Caribbean roots and the Jamaican passport.
  • Generations: the history he gives to Viv and the truth he gives to Del.

Questions that get asked

  • How does Pinnock use the character of Brod in Leave Taking?
  • How does Pinnock use Brod to explore ideas about belonging?

Think you understand it?

Reading is the start. On Incandio a topic counts as mastered only once you have taught it and defended it — the two things a revision guide cannot ask of you.

Incandio this topic → Prove it. Teach it. Defend it. What does “Incandio it” mean?

  1. Teach it — Explain your reading of Brod (Broderick) in Leave Taking to Ember, an AI pupil who has not made one, and answer the awkward question. Understanding is credited; wording is not required.
  2. Defend it — Hold your reading of Brod (Broderick) in Leave Taking against the writer in a short, structured debate marked against descriptors you can read first.
  3. Then the exam — exam-style practice, marked on Incandio.

Completely free. No subscriptions, no paywalls, no account needed to start.

Carry on through Leave Taking

Every study of Leave Taking