What is the significance of Brighton as a place in Graham Greene's Brighton Rock?

Brighton Rock is the story of a struggle between good and evil. Brighton is the perfect setting for a story about good and evil, as it captures a working class vision of both heaven and hell on Earth. Brighton has something for everyone: with vast numbers of attractions for the young and old; rich and poor. To the majority of tourists Graham Greene would have been writing for and about – especially poor Londoners – Brighton is, at first, a glimpse of heaven. It’s most likely their only holiday break, it's relatively cheap, and it’s a short train journey from London. But the excitement is all found in getting there, as many quickly realised that Brighton also had a significant dark side: huge crowds, drunks, beggars, pickpockets, razor gangs that roamed Brighton in the 1930s at the time of the book's setting. This civil unrest stems from Brighton's homegrown hell: its slums. This is where two of the protagonists, Pinkie and Rose come from. Both have been raised Catholic (Greene was also a Catholic), a religion intimately acquainted with the concept of evil and, perhaps more importantly, Sin. The Original Sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden was directly against God, and set the pattern for all sins since then. Pinkie’s problem is that he only understands one side of this teaching, the Sin and the Punishment: he was born in hell and this is where he will always stay. But the other side to Sin is the teaching of Redemption. You can confess your sin and be truly sorry and then you will be forgiven and cleansed of all sin. Rose understands both sides. She believes strongly in Redemption and devotes herself to saving Pinkie. Despite being born in Original Sin along with Pinkie in the slums, Rose's virtue saves her from suffering the same fate that Pinkie does, as he falls off the cliffs of Brighton to his death, his face covered in vitriol. He is literally falling into oblivion (the sea) and the flames of hell (the vitriol) await.