The Destructors Reflection

The Destructors

By: Graham Greene

   The Destructors is a short story about a gang; the Wormsely Common Gang, that begins on a summer's day in August; the day before a bank holiday. The Wormsley Common Gang are a group that meet at a car-park in their neighbourhood everyday where they decide how they should spend their time. On this particular day, the gang, under the leadership of Blackie, had voted to ride around town on buses trying to see how many free rides they could get, until Trevor came along and had a more daring and captivating idea. Trevor explained that he has been late because he had been in the house of a man; Mr. Thomas, who lived down the street in a beautiful house. The gang knew of him as he had kindly gifted them with spare food not long before. Trevor's idea was that the gang break into his house the following day, when Mr. Thomas would be out, and destroy his house which Trevor proclaimed to be beautiful. The gang quickly voted in favour of his idea forgetting all about their leader Blackie and went along with  Trevor's idea. Under his guidance the gang gathered and methodologically began to take the beautiful house apart. They almost got caught during the finishing stages of their plan but eventually they accomplished their goal of ruining his house, unfortunately the success wasn't exactly as planned.

   The three most important characters in the story are Blackie, Trevor (T.) and Mr. Thomas (Old Misery). Blackie is the former leader of the gang who you are made to sympathize with when he is suddenly stripped of his power by Trevor. T. is the quiet son of a clerk who used to be an architect and of a snobby woman; one who thinks that she is better than her neighbours. Old Misery is probably the most interesting character for the reason alone that the least detail is revealed about him. The author wrote in such a way that all the reader knows about him is that he gave food to the gang and that he had a beautiful house-one that was then destroyed. I like how Old Misery remains as a bit of a mystery because it allows me to picture him as I want to. I get to analyse the story from different perspectives. Maybe Old Misery is a man who has lost his family and therefore loneliness was his reason for allowing a gang member into his house or maybe he was simply very gullible and saw no danger in letting such a person onto his property. When I think of Old Misery as a gullible old man I see a relationship between him and the father from The Fly in the Ointment. The Father from that story was naive enough to convince himself that he could live without money whilst Old Misery was naive enough to invite a rebellious boy into his house without fearing danger.

   " "He'll tell you," Blackie said. It was the end of his leadership. Beyond, paying no more attention to him than to a stranger, the gang had gathered around T.; Blackie was dimly aware of the fickleness of favour. " I never really thought about gangs and how they choose their leaders, but reading The Destructors, I was surprised to see how quickly the gang responded to a new source of power. I find it strange that the gang was so easily influenced; within a matter of seconds they had forgotten about Blackie. The respect was gone. To me that was weird because I have always heard about how gangs are really loyal and so I guess I just had this imagine in my head that the leader of a gang should be ruthlessly controlling and a bit more challenging to replace.

   I can think of reasons for Trevor wanting to ruin Old Misery's house, but the story doesn't really point towards a specific for Trevor's deep interest in destroying the man's home. Gang members are sometimes neglected in their households, so maybe Trevor's father loved his job as an architect so much that it got in the way of his relationship with his son causing Trevor to hold a bitter grudge. Whatever be the case, I could not come to a conclusion about why Trevor persuaded the gang to destroy the house and that made me dislike the story. It seemed so completely pointless and the worst part was the since I barely knew anything about Old Misery I couldn't even feel bad for him when his house was ruined, even though I believe that it was ruined for no reason. Although I disliked the story, I liked the irony; that Trevor's father was an architect, he had a passion for creating buildings and structures, whilst his son was the exact opposite, someone who enjoyed destroying such well-crafted buildings. The Destructors also made me think of The Outsiders, another book which I had to read for class about gangs, but one which I really enjoyed. I like that this short story reminded me of The Outsiders but the only real similarity they have is that they are both about gangs. The Outsiders is obviously longer, as it is not a short story, and it creates a strong emotional attachment to characters which, in my opinion, is exactly what The Destructors lacks.