Brighton Rock Study Guide

Graham Green and America’s Sweetheart. Early on in his career, Graham Greene wrote book and movie reviews for The Spectator, and, in 1937 he penned a scathing take-down of Wee Willie Winkie, a film based on the Rudyard Kipling story about the impact of British colonialism on mid-19th Century India. Greene’s opinion was that child star Shirley Temple’s performance amounted to thinly veiled child pornography, aimed at arousing priests and pedophiles. Commenting on Temple’s “well-shaped and desirable little body,” Greene raised the ire of both Temple and Twentieth-Century Fox, who successfully sued Greene and The Spectator for libel. The resulting settlement forced The Spectator out of business. Meanwhile, Greene fled to Mexico, where he started work on The Power and the Glory.

Greeneland. Readers and critics often to refer to the hard-edged locales where Graham Greene’s novels are set as “Greeneland.” Regardless of whether the action takes place in Brighton, Sierra Leone, or the Mexican state of Tabasco, Greene’s stories are characterized by a consistent atmosphere of impending doom, mortal sin, and the life-and-death struggles of right versus wrong, male versus female, and the rich versus the poor. The inhabitants of Greeneland often include tortured priests, corrupt government officials, young people desperate to escape poverty, and lovers thwarted by convention and jealousy. Greene resented the term “Greeneland,” claiming that his writing was not the result of predetermined stylistic choices but instead depicted the world as he saw it.