These are in depth chapter summaries for the whole of Graham Greene's 'Brighton Rock'. Each chapter's plot is summarised, followed by key points/quotes about the settings, characters and themes that are in that chapter.
Brighton Rock Chapter Summaries and Key Quotations
Brighton Rock: Key Quotes
Brighton Rock: Study Guide
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Elements of Crime Writing
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Brighton Rock Chapter Summaries
Brighton Rock Chapter Summaries
Part 1: Chapter 1 (pp. 3-19)
Plot
• Hale is in Brighton as part of his job. He is lost in the large Brighton holiday crowd and is nervous – knowing
‘they’ wanted to kill him
• He goes into a bar and meets Ida who is singing
• A boy enters, Hale buys a drink for him. He tries to bribe him with the prize from his newspaper but the boy
refuses. He leaves in a fury
• Hale tries to persuade Ida to come and eat with him but she refuses so Hale goes down to the front
• We are introduced to the fact the unknown Kite was killed at a railway station
• Hale notices that Cubitt is following him
• Hale tries to pick up a girl to have with him as a witness to protect him but fails. The boy comes up to him so
Hale quickly leaves, again finding Ida
• Hale and Ida take a taxi to the pier and Hale kisses her. He notices a car following and gets extremely nervous
and tells Ida that he’s going to die. Ida doesn’t really believe him
• Despite Hales’ pleas, she goes to freshen up, leaving Hale by the turnstile. Ida returns to find Hale missing and
decides to wait for him to return
Setting
• ‘fresh and glittering air…like a pale Victorian water-colour…pale vanishing clouds across the sky’
• ‘a Victorian sunshade twisted its ribbons and flowers in the sun’
Characters
Charles Hale
• ‘Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him’
• ‘with his inky fingers and his bitten nails, his manner cynical and nervous, anyone could tell he didn’t belong’
• ‘he had to stick closely to a programme’
• ‘this was Hale’s job to do sentry-go, until a challenger released him’
• ‘yesterday Southend, today Brighton, tomorrow – ‘
• ‘it was his duty to be spotted – and it was his inclination too. There were reasons why he didn’t feel too safe in
Brighton, even in a Whitsun crowd’
• ‘nobody paid any attention to Hale’
• ‘he had come out of the same streets, but he was condemned by his higher pay to pretend to want other things,
and all the time the piers, the peepshows pulled at his heart’
• ‘all he could do was to carry his sneer along the front, the badge of loneliness’
• ‘I must get away from here, I must get away: sadly and desperately watching her…but he couldn’t get away,
he had his job to do’
• ‘It was a good paper to be on, and a little flare of pride went up in Hale’s heart when he thought of the long
pilgrimage behind him’
• ‘He was damned…if he’d let that mob frighten him into spoiling his job’
• ‘he’d lost touch. He had nothing to say’
• ‘turned hopelessly to the door’
• ‘the mob had bought his paper…they knew where to expect him’
• ‘it never occurred to hale watching the policeman pass; he couldn’t appeal to him’
• ‘Razor blades’…the words lodged securely in his brain: the thought of the thin wound and the sharp pain. That
was how Kite was killed’
• ‘the old desperate pride persisted, a pride of intellect. He was scared sick, but he told himself, ‘I’m not going to
die’
• ‘There was a deep humility in Hale; his pride was only in his profession: he disliked himself before the glass’
• ‘his hands were shaking. This was real now: the boy, the razor cut, life going out with the blood in pain’
• ‘the instinct not to make a scene, remained overpoweringly strong; embarrassment had more force than terror’
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