In creating Pinkie to be the anti-thesis of God, and placing these traits within the human environment, we can see how Freedom of Will does not always bring positive results, since there is a choice to do Evil. Here Greene explores the relationship between human’s and God, and the nature of Freedom of Will. In Christianity, Pride and Knowledge are the spiritual errors that separate man from God, stemming from the tale of Adam and Eve: Adam was tempted by knowledge from the Apple, and defied God in obtaining it, thus causing the descent from Paradise. Often described as “Hell is fleshed form”, Pinkie has traits which may parallel him to the devil, one of the most interesting parallels being that he is guilty of the two sins that caused Lucifer to become the Fallen Angel, as well as Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden- Pride and Knowledge. Similar to Shakespeare’s character Macbeth, Pinkie finds himself sucked into a cycle of “self-preserving” murders, and it gets to a point where the readers wonder whether Pinkie is human at all. Pinkie is a notoriously evil character, and spends the whole novel evading the detective Ida, who symbolises justice. Although Pinkie’s crimes are ultimately punished, due to the corrupt backdrop of England in the 1930s intertwined with Greene’s cutting social commentary, the readers do not experience a feeling of inspiration to change their outlook on life.

In his novel “Brighton Rock” Graham Greene is concerned with metaphysical questions like the nature of Good against Evil, the ideology of Catholicism and man’s attempt to change his fate, but is that enough to deem it a moral novel? In order for a novel to provide a moralistic lesson to it’s readers, there must be a final sense of triumph to a certain degree.

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