The Representation of Heaven and Hell ‘Brighton Rock’ was written by Graham Greene in 1938 during the great depression. Brighton is a sea-side town which attracts many tourists and is a representation of heaven for the tourists as it is sunny, there is ‘flower garden in bloom’ (p. 5) and there is the pub where people can have a great time with their friends. Brighton is calm and is an escape for people from urban regions. Unfortunately, the inhabitants of Brighton do not see their town through the same eyes of the tourists, and for most of them, Brighton is a representation of hell because of the extreme poverty that exists there, the mobs, the people who spend their whole day drinking and also because of the murders that happened there. ‘Brighton Rock’ is not a novel based on location, but is actually a representation of heaven and hell.
Pinkie, a boy gangster also known as the Boy and the main character of the novel, is the representation of hell in the novel. Despite his young age of 17 years, the Boy is the leader of a gang and committed two murders and tried to make his wife, Rose, kill herself too. The word murder does not have any meaning to him: ‘the word murder conveyed no more to him than the word ‘box’, ‘collar’, ‘giraffe” (p. 45).
Pinkie grew up in a bad atmosphere and his parents did not care about him. Therefore, he did not experience the love of a mother or a father or anyone else. He has been ignored during his whole childhood and due to that ignorance, he believes only in Hell as he never experienced anything good in his life. His beliefs can be shown when he said: “What else could be there? Of course there’s hell.
The Term Paper on “A Swamp Thing from Hell: the Representation of Feminity in Beowulf
“A Swamp-Thing From Hell”: The Representation of Femininity in Beowulf EN 245: The Literary Tradition I Instructor: Dr. Edwin Jewinski Tutorial Group: Elizabeth Student: Shauna Leeson Date: November 29th, 2010 Within in the elegiac narrative of Beowulf, Beowulf purges the Danes not only of Grendel‘s serial terror, but the heroic Geat further triumphs in destroying Grendel’s vengeful and violent ...
Flames and damnation” (p. 52).
Pinkie is not too sure about the existence of heaven because when Rose told him that there is heaven too, he said: “Oh maybe, maybe” (p. 52) and this can also be shown when in the novel, it is said: ‘he wasn’t made for peace, he couldn’t believe in it.
Heaven was a word: hell was something he could trust.’ (p. 228) The Boy is also a very cruel character and this can be shown when he caught a poor-leather jacket in his hand and: ‘He began to pull off the legs and wings one by one’, (p. 95) and also when he was walking on the beach and saw a moth and ‘he crushed it out of existence under his chalky shoe’ (p. 109).
Pinkie does not have a heart as he does not even feel pity for the most helpless creatures. The Boy killed Spicer, another member of the gang, by pushing him over the banister in the presence of Prewitt, a lawyer, and D allow, also a member of the gang, and he told them to tell the police that he was not there and left the crime scene. The Boy does not care whether he has to make other people lie for his own good event though the person does not want to. For example, when he killed Spicer and Mr.
Prewitt said: “I’m getting out of here, I’ll swear I was never in the house’ (p. 124), Pinkie replied: “stay where you are, we don’t want another accident” (p. 124).
This line shows that if Mr. Prewitt does not stay, Pinkie will do something bad to him. Pinkie also scared Prewitt to make him stay when he said: ‘I only want you to say what you want to say.
But it wouldn’t look good, would it, if I was taken up for killing Spicer, and you were here-looking in the soap-dish. It would be enough to ruin some lawyers’ (p. 124).
Pinkie knows that he is going to hell but he does not care about it right now: “Hell-it’s just there.
The Essay on Romantic Philosophy in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The Romantic period produced more poets who, at one time or another, aspired to become philosophers than in any other period in English literature. The Romantic poets felt a need for a metaphysical structure that would, conceptually, make explicit the mind set that had emerged from am era of revolutionary change in art, politics, and society. William Blake is one the philosophical poets of the era ...
You don’t need to think of it -not before you die.” (p. 91) Heaven can be represented in the novel by a few characters. For example, Ida Arnold, a lady who tries to solve Hale’s murder, is the best representation of heaven. Ida met Hale at a pub the same day he died and she is convince that his death is not a natural one as told by the police.
She knows that Pinkie is the person responsible for Hale’s death and she tries to save Rose from Pinkie as Ida knows how dangerous and cruel he is. She is certain that Pinkie does not love Rose and that he married her only for his own good. Ida saved Rose from killing herself because of Pinkie. She acts like a mother to Rose: “What a girl needs at a time like that is her mother and dad.
Anyway, she got me to thank she isn’t dead” (p. 243).
She is an angelic figure to Rose. Even though Ida does not believe in heaven or hell: “That’s just religion.
Believe me, it’s the world we got to deal with” (p. 198), ‘she took life with a deadly seriousness’ (p. 36) and she did anything possible to save Rose from Pinkie’s hands. Colleoni, another mob leader and a business man, also represents heaven as he is rich and has everything he wants and needs. He does not have anything to worry about in his life. Rose is another character that represents heaven because of her innocence and her naivety.
Rose believes in Heaven and this can be shown when Pinkie told her about hell and she said: “And heaven too” (p. 52).
Rose is ready to do anything for Pinkie but she does not see that Pinkie does not love her. Pinkie married Rose (p. 168) not because he loves her but in order to keep her mouth shut so that she does not tell anyone that she knows who put the card under the table cloth at Snow’s, the restaurant she worked at, and also because in that way, nobody will have the right to force her to testify against her husband.
As Pinkie represents hell in the novel and Rose represents heaven, their marriage represents a combination of both heaven and hell and shows how hell can take over. Rose believed in heaven and wanted to go to heaven but when she got married, all she wanted is to go to hell in order to be with Pinkie: ‘she would have found the courage now to kill herself if she hadn’t been afraid that somewhere in that obscure countryside of death they might miss each other-mercy operating somehow for one and not for the other’ (p. 245).
The Essay on Paradise Lost Heaven And Hell
John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost is extremely similar to the Bible's story of creation in many ways, but its most apparent difference is character structure. Milton uses soliloquies in order to give the reader insight to Satan's emotions and motives. They also reveal his tragic flaws: envy, pride, and ambition towards self-glorification. It is these character flaws that allow him to "pervert ...
Rose was ready to do anything for Pinkie: ‘there was nothing he could do, she wouldn’t do: she felt capable of sharing any murder’. (p. 228).
Rose was so blinded by her love for Pinkie that she could not see that she was going on the wrong path and when she met Pinkie, ‘the evil act was the honest act’ (p. 242).
Pinkie encouraged Rose to commit suicide and told her to write a note so that the police do not arrest him for the murder of Rose: “say you couldn’t live without me, something like that. We got to do this right, as it’s always be done” (p. 231).
Rose trusted Pinkie, she believed him when he said that killing herself would not hurt (p.
242).
This shows how na ” ive Rose is. Pinkie ‘tempted her to virtue like a sin’ (p. 241).
Rose does realise that she does not have to kill herself for Pinkie (p.
238) but she will not let him ‘into that darkness alone’ (p. 228).
When Pinkie died (p. 243), Rose goes to see the priest and this shows that she is a complete different person than before she met Pinkie. She has regret for not killing herself and ‘want to be like him-damned’ (p. 245).
The characters in ‘Brighton Rock’ represent the after-life. Pinkie represents pure hell whereas Ida Arnold and Colleoni represent heaven. Rose is the representation of both heaven and hell as at the beginning, she believed in heaven but at the end of the novel, she wanted to be damned just like Pinkie. The novel also shows how hell can take over heaven..
