Crime Fiction
Session Two: Graham Greene,
Brighton Rock
Agenda
• Summary of Session One
• Modernism and crime fiction
• Graham Greene and Brighton Rock
Summary of Session One
•
•
•
•
•
Crime Fiction and the Narrative Paradigm
Story and Plot
Progression
Regression
Digression
Narrative
Story
Present
Plot
Past
Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot
(1984)
• The anticipation of retrospection
The Beginning
The Middle
The End
Plot
Virginia Woolf, ”The Mark on the
Wall”
The
mark
???
a snail!
Made by a
Nail:
Speculation,
Association,
Stream of
consciousness
A rose
Leaf:
Speculation,
Association,
Stream of
consciousness
A crack in
The wood:
Speculation,
Association,
Stream of
consciousness
Modernism, Crime, and Narrative
•
•
•
•
•
James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922)
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1927)
-------------------------------------------------------William Faulkner
Graham Greene and Modernism
• Rejects the mimesis of the mind for its
own sake, for example, Woolf’s project of
examining ”an ordinary mind on an
ordinary day” (”Modern Fiction”)
• Accepts the waste land image (Eliot)
• The notion of sin
Graham Greene, Brighton Rock
• What strikes you as odd and distinctive
about this novel?
• Characters?
• Plot?
• Point of view?
• Imagery?
• Setting?
Graham Greene, Brighton Rock
Criminals: The Boy, Spicer, Dallow, Hale,
Colleoni, etc.
• Crime: Protection money, blackmail,
murder (Hale, Spicer), gang war.
• Detective: Ida Arnold
• ”Crime” and ”criminals”?
• ”Detective”: the reader, the newspaper
readers.
I
II
III
IV
1
Hale
2 (20)
The Boy
3 (28)
Ida Arnold
1 (47)
The Boy
2 (63)
The Boy
1 (73)
Ida Arnold
2 (86)
Spicer
3 (91)
The Boy
4 (103)
The Boy
1 (107)
The Boy
2 (129)
Ida Arnold
3 (132)
The Boy
The Races
Spicer dead
V
VI
1 (141)
The Boy
After inquest
2 (148)
The Boy
Same
3 (153)
The Boy
Visiting Rose’s
parents
4 (157)
Ida Arnold
5 (160)
The Boy
6 (164)
Ida Arnold
1 (169)
Cubitt
2 (180)
The Boy
Talks to Crab
and Ida
VII
1 (207)
Rose
2 (219)
The Boy
3 (225)
The Boy
4 (231)
The Boy
5 (234)
The Boy
6 (241)
Ida Arnold
7 (244)
The Boy
8 (253)
Dallow, Ida
Arnold
9 (259)
The Boy
10 (265)
Ida Arnold
11 (267)
Rose
Visits Mr Prewitt
Hale
•
•
•
•
Kolley Kibber:
Object of dertection
- subjectivity, freedom
The Messenger
•
•
•
•
Fred:
Object of detection
- subjectivity, freedom
The gang war
Rose
• Good and Evil
• Development?
• Change?
The Boy
• Good and Evil
• Development?
• Change?
Ida Arnold
• Right and wrong