This is a summary of key quotations in 'Brighton Rock' categorised thematically under settings, characters and crime conventions. Each quotation is followed by a detailed analysis that covers relevant context as well. The notes helped achieve an A* grade.
Place setting
Brighton has a longstanding reputation for sleaze, illicit behaviour and crime.
- By titling the book ‘Brighton Rock’ in which “Brighton” is a by-word for sin commonly used in
literature, Greene signifies that the novel is a crime text and set in a hostile and dangerous world as
conforming to the crime genre.
- Greene’s description of the Brighton tourist scene and race meetings, where there are a lot of semi-
legal businesses who could only seek the protection of gangs, creates a culture of organised crime
in the novel.
- Brighton’s well-known seediness could be an explanation for why Ida chooses to go there as it
serves as a good place to meet men who may or may not already be married.
- It was difficult for unmarried couples to sleep together outside of their home in the 1930s.
- By setting the novel in Brighton which uses a smart regency facade to mask its back-to-back
Victorian slums and grinding poverty, Greene can introduce the theme of duplicity, which is a typical
feature of crime fiction.
By mainly featuring the Brighton slums as a key setting of ‘Brighton Rock’, Greene signifies Pinkie’s
impoverished background and sexual repression as important elements of the novel’s narrative.
- Both Pinkie and Rose come from “Paradise Piece” in the Carlton Hill slum which were partly cleared
but not rebuilt in the 1930s, signifying their shared working-class background.
- Rose thus feels an affinity with Pinkie which Pinkie arguably reciprocates given that “he
hadn’t hated her” despite being ashamed of not having a glamorous status girlfriend a
gangster should have.
Time and genre setting - follows the standards of the 1930s
Being set at the time of writing which is the 1930s, the novel’s depiction of crime is accurate with regards to
its portrayal of a “razor” as a common choice of weapon used by Pinkie’s gang, echoing the existence of
‘razor gangs’ in all major UK cities in the 1930s which mostly made money from betting syndicates and
protection rackets as Pinkie’s gang does.
The novel also adopts the conventions of the 1930s American hard-boiled crime genre and lock-room genre
which it combines and subverts to convey more serious messages.
- Ida’s method of investigation, such as questioning people and moving from place to place around
Brighton, is reminiscent of the Western frontier genre and hence the hard-boiled genre.
- Ida is also a typical hard-boiled detective in terms of her strong sense of morality, but Greene
does not portray her as the bringer of justice and presents her to make the situation worse
instead to highlight the destructiveness of well-intentioned naive intervention.
- Conforming to Pyro’s locked-room genre, Greene specifically sets the novel in Brighton.
- However, he subverts the typical portrayal of a finite number of suspects for a crime by not
making the novel a ‘whodunit’ –the reader already knows that Colleoni has killed Kite and
Pinkie has killed Hale.
Pessimistic commentary on society - Conventional
Greene likens the “white empty stands” of the Brighton “racecourse” to “the monoliths of Stonehenge”,
painting a prehistoric image of society to put forward the criticism that the lower class of Brighton worships
the racecourse like primitive people did the Stonehenge and humans have not evolved since the prehistoric
age in terms of their violent tendencies.
- While Greene’s negative portrayal of human nature follows crime conventions, the depiction of a
violent society also conforms to that of a hostile and dangerous world typically shown.
, Greene expresses his distaste for tourism in Brighton through the undesirable portrayal of how tourists, who
he refers to as “They” to highlight them as pathetic, “had stood all the way from Victoria in crowded
carriages”, “would have to wait in queues for lunch” and so on.
- Greene’s negative depiction of Brighton remains consistent throughout the novel, which can be seen
as being done deliberately by Greene as the title ‘Brighton Rock’ refers to a stick-like sweet that has
the same text printed all the way through it.
- The lack of change Greene suggests happens in Brighton can be perceived as opposing the
common sense that the society is always changing presented in other crime texts.
Greene reflects the class difference in Brighton through mentioning a Roedean girl “with cropped expensive
turf all round her” and more looking at “the plebian procession” “Beyond the aristocratic turf” in his novel
about gang activities.
- Through the juxtaposition between diction in relation to wealth and poverty, Greene makes it clear
that Brighton is a place of great contrast in terms of class.
Greene describes Pinkie’s “own home beyond in Paradise Piece”, in other words, the Brighton slums, that
“had been pulled down for model flats which had never gone up” looking “as if they had passed through an
intensive bombardment”.
- The image of a wasteland Greene presents from the portrayal of Brighton slums is a reference to
the 1934 pause on slum clearance which left the area in chaos due to preparation for WWII.
Some of the crimes Pinkie and his gangs commit are for earning money.
- Pinkie’s gang practises racketeering by collecting protection money from Brewer and Tate and
money from slot machines to create income.
- Pinkie “slashed with his razored nail at Brewer’s cheek”, which can be seen as assault, to
ensure he pays protection money.
- Pinkie also kills Hale because he exposed the gang’s racketeering through slot machines, one of its
means of generating revenue, and indirectly led to Kite’s death.
Police
The police ironically says “We know all about Hale” who they believe “died quite naturally”, adhering to the
crime convention of the police knowing less than the detective and presuming they know more in 1930s
hard-boiled crime texts.
- The police’s dismissal of Ida’s suspicions also reflects the common lack of credibility amateur
detectives have to professionals in crime texts.
The policeman who arrives at scene where the suicide pact is supposed to be carried out “looked confused
as if he didn’t quite know what was happening”.
- His cluelessness conforms to the stereotypical portrayal of the police as inept and dependent on the
detective in dealing with crimes in crime texts.
The inspector advises Pinkie to “Clear out of Brighton” due to his belief that Brighton would appear more
stable with only one gangster controlling it.
- Through the police as his mouthpiece, Greene reflects the Hobbesian idea that people should
accept a dictator as the least worst compared to factions fighting each other which causes
casualties.
- Greene presents a society in which crime is endemic and the police are not as powerful as the
criminals, conforming to the style of crime fiction from the 1930s onwards.
- The inability of the police to tackle crime in Brighton follows the conventional depiction of the police
being unreliable and weary of the system in crime texts.
Greene describes the inspector as “A man with a tired face” which is a realistic depiction of the police who
is overwhelmed by crime, revealing the crime scene in Brighton to be in chaos as it was in the 1930s.
- His portrayal of the police being weary of the system conforms to the crime genre.
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