As Catholic writers grappling with the problems plaguing modern society from a distinctly religious and moral perspective, Flannery O'Connor and Graham Greene are worth considering together. In one of her letters, quoted in The Habit of Being, O'Connor writes comparing her style and Greene's: "As between me and Greene there is a difference of fiction certainly and probably a difference of theological emphasis as well. If Greene created an old lady, she would be sour through and through and if you dropped her, she would break, but if you dropped my old lady, she’d bounce back at you, screaming 'Jesus loves me!'” (400.)
One could assess the veracity (and, more simply, the meaning) of this statement by comparing Greene's Brighton Rock to O'Connor's Wise Blood. Both novels have as their protagonist an impoverished, socially alienated, and religiously tormented young man -- Pinkie Brown in "Brighton Rock" and Hazel Motes in "Wise Blood" -- with an anxious relationship to sexual matters and a misogynistic orientation towards women. Each protagonist strives to reach some sense of stable identity and recognition. Each young man has a relationship with a young woman that, far from conforming to romantic conventions, involves great pain and spiritual upset -- Rose feeds Pinkie's sense of evil, and Sabbath Lily goads Motes on in his strange quest of not being, and being, a preacher. The climactic scenes of both novels are also uncannily similar: Pinkie accidentally blinds himself with the vitriol he carries around as a last-resort weapon, and Hazel deliberately blinds himself with lime as an act of faith.
