Despite his troubled life, the young gangster and former altar boy continues to be a deeply religious Roman Catholic. The protagonist, Pinkie, is a seductive and mischievous 17-years-old boy who, after the unsuspected death of Kite, struggles to assure his position as a leader of a gang amongst his older fellows. The book is, in fact, rich in plot and has perfectly written psychological portraits of the characters. Desirous to maintain the stylistic quality of his work and, on the other hand, to appeal to a wider audience, Green writes Brighton Rock, which reconciles these two preoccupations.
Green is determined to become a successful bestselling writer without abandoning his literary aspirations easily perceptible in his anterior novels. In our analysis, one other detail needs to be considered: even though Brighton Rock constitutes the seventh book written by Graham Green, only two of his previous publications ( Stamboul Train and A Gun for Sale) were noticed by a relatively large range of readers. This important lifetime event results in his ambiguous attitude towards this religion (NB akin to many of his fictional characters): admiration and doubt. Often referred to as Catholic writer (in the manner of François Mauriac in France), Green is indeed obsessed with this faith that he adopted only at the age of 24, in the name of love, to marry his fiancée, Vivien Daryell-Browning. In order to entirely grasp the specificity of Brighton Rock, it is certainly noteworthy to take under consideration some facts related to the life of the author. In its stylistic and thematic structure, the book comprises the elements that are characteristic of all Graham Green’ literary work. Published in 1938, Brighton Rock by the Nobel Prize winning writer Graham Green is one of the most important novels in the history of 20th century English literature.
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