Graham Greene's 'The Destructors'

Is man’s natural violent tendencies a product of their environment or is a more dominant inner force to blame? Although published in 1954, Graham Greene’s short-story, “The Destructors”, holds values and themes that still hold prominence even sixty-three years later. The story follows a group of boys called the Wormsley Common Gang in a neighborhood ravaged by the second world war in London. This particularly group of adolescent delinquents enjoy committing crimes such as stealing bus tickets from unsuspecting individuals. They meet everyday to plan their misdeeds, but their focus changes upon the arrival of their new recruit and leader, Trevor, who has devised a plan to destroy the last standing artifacts of beauty in their war torn community.

Most kids his age would find entertainment in more simpler past times such as playing with a ball, or sports and such. Trevor instead finds fun and entertainment in destruction and destroying things dear to other people, which in this case is Mr. Thromas and his house belongings. John Stinson states in his own article about Graham Greene’s “The Destructors”, “To be sure, though, there is something enigmatic about Trevor, some inscrutably dark center of his being” (107). The aftermath of the war has hardened Trevor’s psyche and in turn, robbed him of his innocence. While it can be said that destruction and a general hate for beauty is what Trevor has transformed into, It can also be said that his innocece was replaced with the cynical concept of nihilismm. Trevor’s ultimate motivation behind his inexplicable acts of destruction, are grounded in the idea that beauty and all things have no significant value and must be destroyed. Upon Mr. Thomas’s unexpected arrival back to his home, the boys question whether they have done enough destruction of the house so that they can leave and reduce the chances of getting caught by Mr. Thomas. When Trevor hears this he lashes back, “This- was the

Mr. Thomas is a symbol of the strong generation of people before that of Trevor’s generation. This generation of hardy people value kindness, tradition and general respect for things and people, oppostie to that of Trevor’s nihilistic beliefs. Kindness, in the case of the Wormsley Common Gang, is a foreign concept and thus is not understood in there day to day lives. We see this in their first confrontation with Mr. Thomas as he generously offers them a gift. Mr. Thomas says, “I got some chocolates...Don’t like ‘em myself. Here you are” (50). Upon hearing this, the boys respond by saying that “It’s a bribe… He wants us to stop bouncing balls on his wall… We’ll show him we don’t take bribes” (50). The boys don’t even give second though to the idea that maybe Mr. Thomas is extending a hand of kindess towards the boys, instead there negative tendencies immediately percieve the worst from the act and assume it is a bribe, or a general act of cruelty towards the boys. They’ve no respect for the old man and continue the rest of their day furiously bouncing their balls on his wall, as if to retaliate back at Mr. Thomas for something he didn’t actually do. Jennifer Smith’s take on this shift in values between the two generations states that Trevor’s society has survived the trauma imposed on it by the forces of the war and