• Religion

Brighton rock is an unconventional love story between Pinkie and Rose, whose shared
catholic faith shapes, illuminates and ultimately dooms their love. Both characters
are devoutly catholic, though imperfectly so – Pinkie focuses more on hell and
damnation, whereas Rose is in greater consideration of heaven and redemption. In
the end although Pinkie dies a terrible death, it is Pinkie’s vision of damnation
that triumphs, Pinkie’s faith has been formed by his upbringing of which Greene
offers glimpses. These glimpses are telling impactful. Pinkie’s belief in God is
bent on punishment, makes sense when taken in the context of his childhood. His
Gid is vindictive and ruthless, and Pinkie is a reservoir of hate, much of it is
aimed at himself.
Rose’s own life is equally bleak, but her faith takes a different direction. She
rather looks at God as a provider of escape. Layer when Pinkie frees her from the
bondage of poverty, he becomes her God. And such is the extent that when Pinkie is
damned, she is ready to participate. Pinkie’s Catholicism is fatalistic. His morbid
fascination with death and damnation and Rose’s guileless belief in a merciful God,
combined with Ida’s life philosophy of an “eye for an eye” –
constitute the novel’s consideration with religion.

• Sex and Shame

Pinkie has grown up witnessing his parents saturday night love making ritual and he
views sex with revulsion and disdain at 17 he cherishes his "bitter virginity" and
avoids sexual intimacy with Rose,as long as he can. Eda Arnold on the other hand
sees sex as a drive, healthy part of human nature For Rose, sex with Pinkie is a
mortal sin. And once the sin has been committed, Rose feels a freedom. Pinkie's
catholic faith augments his disgust with the act of sex having been taught that sex
is for procreation and is to be performed only inside the safe parameteres of
marriage, Pinkie blames the woman in the scenario, assuming that his mother
unsatiable animal appetites caused such repugnant displays. When he finally forces
himself to make love to Rose, his fear disappears, far from finding sex
distasteful, he rejoices in his newfound ability and manliness

Eda prides herself in knowing what men like, she flirts with strangers and her male
aquintances, weilding her body as a weapon. Hail is convinced by her 'fertility
godess' like proportions For Rose sex is not hollow fun nor is it nasty and vile,
it is sacred. No longer a virgin she finds herslef freed from the obligations of
the church and the attendant feeling of guilt and shame. She is now in charge of
her own life.

• Pride and ambition

Pinkie and Eda at first glance are foils, Pinkie is a criminal and a catholic Eda
an upstanding member of the community who puts more stock in superstition that she
does in god-given grace or the possibilty of eternal damnation but the two
eventually are intimately connected by the pride that they take in their own
accomplishment. Pinkie takes pride in the fact that he has managed to leave behind
his past as a poverty stricken street kid and has become the head of a successful
crime syndicate. However, his ambition gets in his way of finding true happiness.
Pinkie’s pride in his own cleverness blinds him to the fact that Rose knew all
along that he was behind Hale’s killing.

Eda's Pride is located elsewhere she is convinced that whatever she does is beyond
reproach, she trusts her instincts but as Greene writes "the world was a good place
if you didn't weaken. She was like the Chariot in a triumph - behind her were all
the big battalions, right’s right, an eye for an eye, when you want to do a thing
well, do it yourself" Eda rationalizes her monomania, she congratulates herself.
The scenes of Pride sets the violent events of the novel in action and it brings
them to an equally violent close