Brighton Rock

Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com Brighton Rock the Matter, and The End of the Affair also feature characters INTRODUCTION struggling to reconcile their faith with the harsh realities of a world overrun by sin. Sin and its repercussions are likewise the BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF GRAHAM GREENE subjects of James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and Henry Graham Greene was born to a wealthy and influential William Lindsay Gresham’s Nightmare Alley. Like Brighton Rock, family. As a boy, he attended a prestigious Berkhamsted these mid-twentieth century crime novels make it clear that boarding school, for which his father served as housemaster, murder is no easy business. Patricia Highsmith’s The Blunderer and later went on to study at Oxford. Upon graduation, he is another take on the psychology of the incompetent killer, worked as a tutor and journalist for both the Nottingham while Dolores Hitchens’s Fool’s Gold explores the unintended Journal and The Times. In 1926, he married Vivien Dayrell consequences of a teenage robbery gone wrong. Browning, a Catholic, having converted to her faith. In 1929, Graham published his first novel, The Man Within, and the KEY FACTS success of that book allowed him to work as a writer full-time. During World War II, he was recruited by his sister, Elisabeth, • Full Title: Brighton Rock to join MI6 as a spy, and he spent much of his life traveling the • When Written: Late 1930s world, using his experiences in foreign countries to inform his • Where Written: London, England fiction. He also suffered from periodic bouts of depression and engaged in a number of extra-marital affairs. In 1947, he left • When Published: 1938 Vivien and their two children, later proclaiming that his books • Literary Period: Modernism were his true progeny. He wrote more than twenty novels, • Genre: Literary thriller including The Power and the Glory (widely considered his • Setting: Brighton, England in the early 20th century masterpiece), four travelogues, eight plays, ten screenplays, • Climax: Pinkie drives Rose to the seaside town of and more than fifty short stories. He died at age 86 of leukemia Peacehaven where he hopes to convince her to take her own in Vevey, Switzerland. life in a suicide pact he doesn’t plan to honor. His plan is foiled, however, when Ida Arnold shows up with the police to HISTORICAL CONTEXT confront him about the murders of Hale and Spicer. Desperate, Pinkie spills vitriol on himself and runs off a Brighton’s horse racing tracks saw a rash of razor attacks in the nearby cliff to his death. 1930s and 1940s. Perpetrated by youth gangs, the assaults • Antagonist: Although Pinkie is the novel’s main character, he served as inspiration for Greene’s novel. Greene based the is also its villain. Ida Arnold, Pinkie’s adversary, is the character of Colleoni on Charles “Derby” Sabini, a leader of the strongest force for good in the novel. As such, each of these London underground often referred to as “the king of characters can be seen as both a protagonist and antagonist. racehorse gangs.” Brighton was (and still is) a tourist town. The • Point of View: Third person omniscient constant traffic of pleasure-seekers to the seaside town gives it an aura of transience and vice which informs the novel. Because the town’s economy was dependent on a steady flow of cash EXTRA CREDIT from visitors, it is possible that Brighton Rock is set during an Graham Green and America’s Sweetheart. Early on in his economic “slump” caused by World War II. Although the war career, Graham Greene wrote book and movie reviews for The had a chilling effect on the town, tourists still visited in large Spectator, and, in 1937 he penned a scathing take-down of Wee numbers. Willie Winkie, a film based on the Rudyard Kipling story about the impact of British colonialism on mid-19th Century India. RELATED LITERARY WORKS Greene’s opinion was that child star Shirley Temple’s performance amounted to thinly veiled child pornography, For more on Pinkie and his gang, check out Greene’s 1936 aimed at arousing priests and pedophiles. Commenting on thriller, , which acts in some ways as a prequel to A Gun for Sale Temple’s “well-shaped and desirable little body,” Greene raised in that it tells the story of Kite’s death, which sets Brighton Rock, the ire of both Temple and Twentieth-Century Fox, who the stage for Pinkie’s ascendance to the role of gang leader and successfully sued Greene and The Spectator for libel. The the murder of Hale. With its focus on matters of damnation and resulting settlement forced The Spectator out of business. redemption, is often considered Greene’s first Brighton Rock Meanwhile, Greene fled to Mexico, where he started work on “Catholic” novel. Greene’s The Power and the Glory, The Heart of The Power and the Glory. ©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 1 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com Greeneland. Readers and critics often to refer to the hard- passing. The board offers up a word jumble that Ida thinks is edged locales where Graham Greene’s novels are set as pointing to forced suicide. She vows to get to the bottom of “Greeneland.” Regardless of whether the action takes place in what killed Hale that day, telling Old Crowe that she is Brighton, Sierra Leone, or the Mexican state of Tabasco, confident her firm and unshakable knowledge of right and Greene’s stories are characterized by a consistent atmosphere wrong will serve her well. of impending doom, mortal sin, and the life-and-death struggles Pinkie begins his campaign to woo Rose by taking her to of right versus wrong, male versus female, and the rich versus Sherry’s nightclub. Over drinks they discover they are both the poor. The inhabitants of Greeneland often include tortured Catholics. The way they see and practice their faith could not priests, corrupt government officials, oungy people desperate be more dissimilar, however. Pinkie believes in a God that to escape poverty, and lovers thwarted by convention and punishes and damns his subjects; Rose believes in a God that jealousy. Greene resented the term “Greeneland,” claiming that redeems. While they talk, Pinkie fingers a bottle of vitriol, or his writing was not the result of predetermined stylistic choices sulfuric acid, that he carries with him everywhere. The bottle is but instead depicted the world as he saw it. an odd, almost alive thing, and it whispers to Pinkie that, while he keeps the acid around for his enemies, it will, in the end, be PLOT SUMMARY the death of him. Pinkie receives an invitation to visit Colleoni, the top mob boss Brighton Rock by Graham Greene begins with the news in Brighton who is living in luxury at the Cosmopolitan hotel. reporter Charles Hale drinking alone in Brighton on a tourist- The two men talk about the upcoming races and Kite’s killing, choked holiday weekend. Hale, in Brighton as part of his which Pinkie blames on Hale and on Kite himself. Pinkie then newspaper’s “Kolley Kibber man” promotion, knows that Pinkie threatens Colleoni, but the older man is not intimidated, only and his gang are after him for a story he wrote about Kite, the amused. He suggests to Pinkie that he join his gang. Colleoni gang’s now deceased former leader. His only hope for survival would love to have someone so young, skilled, and hungry lies in securing company for the day. At a bar, he runs into the working for him, but Pinkie is offended at the idea and storms curvy and flirtatious Ida Arnold. The two share a cab ride and a off. In the hotel hallway, he meets a cop who asks him to come kiss, after which Ida insists on ducking into a ladies’ restroom to the station and talk to the police inspector. Pinkie goes, for a wash. Hale begs her to stay with him, but Ida, confusing his afraid that perhaps Rose has squealed, but the inspector’s desperation for ardor, promises to be right back. When she purpose for calling the meeting is to ask Pinkie not to commit returns, Hale is gone. any violence at the upcoming races at the horse park. The Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old tough-guy Pinkie Brown is inspector is worried about a mob war between Pinkie’s gang killing time, waiting for the members of his gang to show up and and Colleoni’s. He warns Pinkie that Colleoni is too powerful to tell him that their job is done. Eventually, Spicer, Cubitt, and compete with, and Pinkie storms off again, angry that no one Dallow all join Pinkie in a café on the pier, informing him that will give him the respect he deserves. He begins to think that a Hale is dead and the remaining Kolley Kibber cards have been blood bath is in order. Kite and Hale’s deaths started placed around town in such a way to throw the authorities off something; Pinkie wouldn’t mind finishing it, ve en if it means their trail. Pinkie worries that Spicer might have been seen more killing. when placing a card under a restaurant tablecloth, thereby Ida is making headway in her investigation. She hears about leaving them vulnerable to discovery. Pinkie decides to return Kite’s death at the hands of Colleoni’s men from a chatty to the restaurant himself. There he meets Rose, a plain and barman and goes to Snow’s café to talk to Rose, whom she timid waitress who says she found the card.

Load more