Brighton Rock

The new film remake of Brighton Rock has introduced the novel to a new generation of readers, most of whom may know modern Brighton by its iconic cultural status, impressive nightlife, or rather more reductively as “London-by-the-sea”. Graham Greene’s somewhat infamous account of thirties Brighton does indeed find some of its foundations in London, but it is perhaps the presence of the capital in the novel which helps to create Brighton’s own literary identity.

All the usual Greene ingredients are present; the irresistible opening line, the dark and thrilling plot which takes murder, drink, piety and sin in equal measure. We meet “The Boy”, later to be named as Pinkie Brown. Seventeen years old, devout Catholic, he reeks of an awful hellish zealousness – he is uncertain of heaven, but deadly assured of the presence of hell. First seen staring through the eyes of petrified Fred Hale in a seafront pub, Pinkie is the epitome of menace in the opening pages, intensified by his being stonily dismissive of the booze which otherwise soaks Greene’s characters, none more so than that of Ida Arnold, the dubious heroine of the novel. It is she whose suspicions are aroused by the murder of Fred Hale and who attempts to bring Pinkie to justice whilst he and his gang attempt to avoid the noose for the killing. To do so he must keep a possible witness quiet: thus he begins a relationship with a girl not far from his age, the almost comically naïve Rose.

The main thrust of the novel is driven by the tension between Pinkie’s own paranoia and fear of death and Rose’s burgeoning, innocent romantic desire for him. As this tension grows and the bodies of Pinkie’s own gang begin to fall, he appears to make a creeping transformation into adulthood, if only to try and preserve his life. He gives way to the “mortal sin” which he has avoided, possibly through boyish fear, possibly through an intense desire for at least some kind of religious redemption. As such, the consummation of his and Rose’s marriage is merely a “human shame”. In many ways it is a novel of the conflict between religious and non-religious morality, between Ida’s understanding of what is “Right” and how “Justice” should be done and the sinful influence of Pinkie. Rose becomes trapped between the two, knowing only the morality of true romance, which neither Pinkie nor Ida can ever adhere to.

At the same time, the novel is one of contrast between Brighton and London. The Londoner Ida acts as detective, trying to root out The Boy who is in some ways “real Brighton” in order that he be punished appropriately for his actions. Pinkie and Rose establish that they have something greater, a perverse faith, a sense of suffering built in the very streets of Brighton which transcends the atheist morality of London. Brighton is made into much more than simply an appropriate cultural setting – the characters are built in the space between the holiday-makers and the gang warfare – where the only desire or drive is an intense Catholicism. The only difference between Rose and Pinkie is to what kind of death they each drive towards.

Greene had mixed feelings about the novel, questioning his original direction for it as a detective story, and saying of Ida that she “obstinately refused to come alive”. The plot at times does feel segmented and the final quarter of the book severely lacks a consistent pace, jerking and crawling to its climax. The real strength of this novel lies not, in fact, in the seediness of the gangsters or the knives slashing the faces of criminal bookmakers, but in the way Greene establishes the more human conflicts beneath the violence; the battle between Ida and Rose’s morality, the struggle of Rose’s desire to overcome Pinkie’s cold detachment and the way in which contemporary youth must make an adversary of its preceding generations if it is to attempt to define a place for itself in a frightening and sinister world. Pinkie, in this way, could well be an allegory for the emergence of the now culturally significant city of Brighton itself- a youth fighting against the insistent morality of age.