GOOD AND EVIL

OR
CHRISTIAN NOVEL
OR
ALLEGORICAL NOVEL

INTRODUCTION

In "Brighton Rock," Graham Greene explores themes of corrupted innocence and betrayal
for the first time, incorporating the motif of the chase and symbols of evil within a religious
context, specifically Roman Catholicism. The concepts of good and evil are understood
through the religious beliefs of the main characters, Pinkie and Rose. The story is presented
with a melodramatic style, featuring confrontations, coincidences, chases, betrayals, and
confessions, all influenced by the religious theme. The plot revolves around race track
gangs, protection rackets, and the violence that accompanies them, including razor
slashings. It includes characters like bookmakers, bettors, gamblers, and informers, and
uses track jargon like "polony," "buer," "carving," and "bogies." The setting is one of artificial
cheerfulness, with amusement booths, shooting galleries, dance halls, pavilions, piers, and
pubs, all set against the sea, symbolizing constant change and continuity. On the surface,
the novel appears to be a typical thriller, featuring characters like Ida Arnold, who seeks
justice; Pinkie Brown, the one being chased; and Rose, the love interest. While it has all the
elements of a thriller, the melodramatic elements are woven together to highlight the
religious themes. The Church's presence is constantly felt, guiding, defining, and
commenting throughout the story. This religious perspective gives the novel a deeper
allegorical meaning, with the central theme being justice and the triumph of right over wrong.

BODY PART

In "Ways of Escape," Graham Greene says that he started "Brighton Rock" in 1937 as a
detective story, but only the first fifty pages still resemble that genre. He claims he would
have removed those pages if he had been strong enough. However, this claim seems
misleading because the detective story structure is deeply embedded in the novel and can't
simply be cut out by removing a few pages. Despite what Greene says, "Brighton Rock"
remains a detective story among other things.The novel incorporates elements of reading
and interpretation, much like a detective story, which is about solving and understanding
clues. Scenes of reading are frequent in the narrative, and the detective story structure
provides a larger framework for the investigation of a criminal's deceptions. This focus on
reading highlights various ways of interpreting the novel, suggesting that it always reflects
the critic's process of reading and understanding, much like the candy stick that always
reveals "Brighton Rock" when broken.This discussion aims to explore the critical issues
related to different reading strategies in the novel. By examining how the narrative handles
the detective-story plot, the goal is to offer a fresh perspective on the novel and suggest new
critical approaches for analyzing the text.

Pinkie Brown, a seventeen-year-old, leads Kite's gang. Kite, whose murder was mentioned
in "A Gun for Sale," had been betrayed by Fred Hale, a publicity man for the Daily
Messenger, to Colleoni, a successful racketeer who has ties with the police. Pinkie needs to
show his leadership by avenging Kite's murder. Although Fred Hale dies of heart failure
before Pinkie can kill him, it is still considered a murder. To escape from Pinkie and his gang,
Fred, who is known professionally as Kolley Kibber, stays close to Ida Arnold, a kind-hearted
blonde who spends time in the amusement area. Understanding how scared he is, Ida
leaves him for a few minutes to use the restroom. During those few minutes, Pinkie and his
gang catch Fred. Back in London, Ida learns about Fred's death. Remembering how scared
he was and his desire to live, she doubts that it was a suicide or heart failure. She returns to
Brighton to find out the truth and gets involved in the gang war between Pinkie and Colleoni.
Ida bets on Fred's horse, Black Boy, and wins enough money to take her time in catching the
murderer. To hide Hale's murder, Pinkie sends Spicer, an old and nervous gang member, to
place Kolley Kibber's identification cards in various spots around Brighton to make it harder
to determine when the murder happened. At Snow's Restaurant, a young waitress named
Rose finds one of the cards and realizes that Spicer is not Kolley Kibber. To keep her quiet,
Pinkie starts courting Rose, and she falls in love with him. Ida learns from Rose that Fred
Hale did not leave Kibber's card, and she concludes that Pinkie is responsible for Fred's
death. Ida then decides to avenge Fred.

As her name suggests, Ida is portrayed as a mother figure. Fred feels a sense of pride that
resists this association, but she symbolizes safety and comfort for him. He sees her as a
source of shelter, wisdom, and common sense, even though his pride taunts him for wanting
to return to a motherly figure and not stand on his own. Throughout the novel, Ida's motherly
image is emphasized; at one point, she even introduces herself as Rose's mother to the
gang. However, Ida represents more than just a mother figure; she embodies humanity. She
believes she understands right and wrong but feels uneasy about issues of good and evil.
Ida claims to be a stickler for what is right, yet she lacks a strong religious belief, similar to
Anne Crowder. Ida is full of life and strength, firmly believing that only the tangible world
around her is real. She represents the everyday people enjoying themselves in Brighton.
Fred is right to seek her out, as she is the opposite of the death that Pinkie represents.
Angry that Fred has been denied a full life, Ida's humanity drives her to fight the injustice.
She believes she can restore justice, as she trusts in a natural order rather than a divine
one. This belief makes her take on the role of avenger: someone made Fred unhappy, so
someone else should be made unhappy in return.Ida uses her ouija board for confirmation of
her mission. The board spells out "FRESUICILLEYE," which she interprets as Fred, Suicide,
and Eye, reinforcing her belief in "an eye for an eye." She finds excitement and purpose in
this mission, viewing it as a bit of life. Ida's idea of justice is rooted in the natural world and is
easy to understand, whereas the concept of God's justice is more complex, dealing with the
deeper aspects of good and evil.

Pinkie Brown believes in right too; but he believes in controlling rights. For he is a fascist. To
coition Pinkie ascribes all the ills of the world. As a child he had rejected his parents after
witnessing their Saturday night ritual of sex. In Kite he had found a "father," for Kite had
offered him a refuge from sex. The father had died, but Pinkie had prolonged his
existence—"not touching liquor, biting his nails in the Kite way . . ." (293). Representing life
and creation, Ida forces Pinkie to marry the waitress who had seen Spicer leave Kolley
Kibber's card in Snow's restaurant. The natural mother, within the allegory, battles the
unnatural father Ida versus Kite, love and violence opposed. For Kite represents the cult of
power as Ida represents the religion of humanity. The strong man in terms of the allegory
runs up against the forces of society and is defeated.

For Pinkie, the idea of sex is connected to the idea of purity, which is influenced by his
Roman Catholic beliefs. His virginity gives him a sense of strength and pride that he wouldn't
have otherwise. Like the characters Andrews from "The Man Within" and Conrad Drover
from "It's A Battlefield," Pinkie's understanding of life is limited. However, unlike them, his
Roman Catholic upbringing has also taught him about evil. Pinkie believes in hell and the
devil because he understands the intense torture of pain; for him, suffering is the only reality.
When Rose asks if he believes in hell, he replies that it must be true because it fits with his
understanding of the world. He thinks atheists are ignorant because hell, with its flames,
damnation, and torments, makes sense to him. Pinkie is haunted by the images of
damnation, and he views sex as a symbol of the world's evil. He recalls how sex drove Annie
Collins to suicide by putting her head on the railroad tracks because she was pregnant at
fifteen and had already had a baby two years earlier. Pinkie feels he knows hell intimately
because he sees it reflected in life around him. When his lawyer Prewitt quotes Marlowe,
saying "Why this is hell, nor are we out of it," Pinkie is interested because he believes he
alone understands this truth. He constantly sees symbols of hell: the man collecting debris
on Brighton's streets, the beggar missing half his body, and Rose's parents who sold her for
fifteen guineas. For Pinkie, life is like his parents having sex on Saturday night. While nature
spoke to Wordsworth of eternal beauty, it speaks to Pinkie of an eternity filled with pain,
including worms, cataracts, cancer, and children being born and dying slowly.

Even though Pinkie is very familiar with evil, he can still recognize goodness when he sees
it. When he says to Rose, "I'll be seeing you. You and me have things in common," he
acknowledges their connection. Rose and Pinkie are like two sides of the same coin; they
need each other to exist. However, Pinkie mistakenly thinks that goodness and ignorance
are the same. He doesn't realize that Rose knows he is evil but loves him anyway.

Rose and Pinkie share their Roman Catholic faith. Rose, like Pinkie, comes from Nelson
Place and knows the same symbols of evil, but her innocence remains intact. Her goodness
is drawn to Pinkie's evil, and she understands that he can only find direction through her:
"The most evil part of him needed her; it couldn't exist without goodness." When Pinkie
marries Rose to prevent her from testifying, he corrupts her goodness and betrays his own
virginity, which was the source of his strength, as well as his father figure. Their relationship
is a mix of heaven and hell: "She was good, he realized that, and he was doomed; they were
meant for each other."

In the allegory of the story, the primary forces of good and evil are represented by Rose and
Pinkie, respectively. Ida Arnold occupies the middle ground, symbolizing human nature. She
recognizes how foreign these extremes are to her understanding of humanity. When she is
with Pinkie and Rose, Ida feels like she's in a strange land without even a phrasebook to
understand their language. As a representative of human nature, Ida believes she can
discern between right and wrong, but she feels inadequate when confronted with extremes
of good or evil. She is truly an outsider in the spiritual conflict she instigates, as she cannot
grasp the mercy and justice of God, viewing everything through the lens of life and vitality
and believing in justice that is settled in the world—”an eye for an eye”. Ida's allies are the
forces of continuity, while Pinkie aligns himself with the forces of evil to which he is
dedicated. He often declares "Credo in unum Satanum" (I believe in one Satan). Pinkie
possesses the same energy as Ida but directs it towards evil rather than good. Despite his
Catholic upbringing, which taught him about the suffering of Christ with each step towards
power, Pinkie believes that peace and power are synonymous. As a child, he once aspired
to become a priest, seeing celibacy as a defense against sex. However, Kite's influence and
the prevailing evil in the world led him away from holiness. Ida's actions force Pinkie to
confront his natural inclinations, particularly towards the world of sex and its temptations.

For justice to prevail, Pinkie and his evil must be eliminated, and Ida, symbolizing humanity,
is determined to make this happen. When Black Boy wins the race as Fred Hale predicted, it
aligns with the forces of vitality supporting Ida's cause. Pinkie senses the significance of this
moment, feeling uneasy as if he were superstitious: "If I were one of those superstitious guys
who touch wood, throw salt, avoid ladders, I might be scared too." From the race onward,
Pinkie meticulously plans his every move, yet he feels an inexplicable pressure guiding his
actions. Ida persists in her pursuit—she questions people, calls Spicer, and pressures Rose.
Pinkie tries to counteract this by marrying Rose, corrupting her with his own evil, and even
proposing a fake suicide pact to bind her to him. However, Ida's determination remains
unyielding: "Look at me," she insists, emphasizing her steadfastness. "I've never changed.
It's like those sticks of rock: bite it all the way down, you'll still read Brighton. That's human
nature."She rushes to the cliff where Pinkie is forcing Rose towards damnation. The
policeman accompanying her is bewildered, but he follows her commands. Ida intervenes to
prevent Rose's suicide and confronts Pinkie, leading to his ultimate downfall and damnation.

After the dramatic events conclude, Rose goes to her confessor and expresses her inability
to repent for not damning herself alongside Pinkie. The priest refers to Péguy, a "sinner" who
struggled with the idea that God would allow any creature to suffer damnation. He speaks of
the "appalling strangeness of the mercy of God," representing the Church's voice, seeking to
restore balance once human passions have subsided. He comforts Rose, urging her to
"hope and pray," explaining that the Church does not require belief that any soul can be cut
off from mercy.However, he adds a final reflection, noting that Catholics, because of their
belief, may be more aware of and capable of evil than others. Despite this, Rose remains
uncertain because her firsthand experience with evil has convinced her of the reality of
damnation. Knowing she carries Pinkie's child, she returns home to face "the worst horror of
all"—Pinkie's recorded words of hatred towards her and what she symbolizes. This reality
leaves Rose feeling trapped in a life without hope, where evil seems as perpetual as life
itself.As Pinkie's body falls into the sea, it symbolically absorbs his evil, becoming part of the
natural world. For Rose, life becomes a "horror" because, knowing Pinkie's hatred, she feels
deprived of hope.

CONCLUSION

In "Brighton Rock," Graham Greene uses sensational and melodramatic elements to explore
his themes in alignment with his religious beliefs. The detective story framework supports the
allegorical meaning of the novel. With sharply defined contrasts between good and evil, the
novel's structure highlights these distinctions and reinforces their importance. Greene
employs background details as symbols and for dramatic effect, such as the storm during
Pinkie's death, which intensifies the turmoil of the story. However, this storm does not
provide cleansing; instead, it subtly influences the reader's perception. The religious themes
deeply animate the narrative throughout. For example, when Spicer is pushed through the
bannister and the railing is found across his chest, Greene doesn't need to explicitly point out
the Christ-like imagery. The context of the novel naturally evokes this impression, showing
how religious motifs are intricately woven into the narrative fabric.