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The Destructors Essay

The short story "The Destructors" by Graham Greene follows a gang in post-World War 2 London led by a new member called T. T convinces the gang to carry out the ruthless act of destroying an innocent old man's house. The story explores themes of how envy can destroy innocence, how environments of war can cause recklessness in youth, and how resentment of class differences may lead to destructive acts against those of higher social class. It also examines how easily loyalty can shift within groups and how promises of equality may justify cruelty.

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Naeem Rashid
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58 views1 page

The Destructors Essay

The short story "The Destructors" by Graham Greene follows a gang in post-World War 2 London led by a new member called T. T convinces the gang to carry out the ruthless act of destroying an innocent old man's house. The story explores themes of how envy can destroy innocence, how environments of war can cause recklessness in youth, and how resentment of class differences may lead to destructive acts against those of higher social class. It also examines how easily loyalty can shift within groups and how promises of equality may justify cruelty.

Uploaded by

Naeem Rashid
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Destructors essay

In the stunning short story The Destructors the reader is reanimated into the life of post-world war 2,
craved by the genius author Graham Greene. Inside London there is a gang that likes to cause mischief.
A new member commonly known as T, comes along and takes in charge of the gang, despite not being
the leader. He leads the gang to doing the most ruthless act of all, destroying an innocent old mans
house. The main theme of this story was how enviousness can destroy the innocence of a person.
Greene deals with the concept of jealousy through Ts idea of the destruction of the house
The Theme innocence is presented in the story through characterization. The gray world these kids live
is surrounded by the destruction of World War 2. All the violence and chaos harden the gangs hearts.
Its replaced their innocence with cynicism, selfishness and rebelliousness. Greene shows how an
environment of war and destruction can cause inconsideration and rebelliousness between people
when the gang destroys Thomass house without feeling any regret. The idea of the destructors could be
correlated to Christchurchs earth quake. People started to graffiti buildings, there has been a more
crimes and other troubles. Christchurch police area commander Superintendent Andy McGregor says
alcohol was largely behind the change as punters found new places to drink and cause trouble
The story also explores how loyalty causes unfairness between groups. T comes up with an idea which
seems awesome to the gang members. This makes the gang member to be more loyal to T even though
Blackie is a good leader. Here here. Whos in favor? is quote from a fat boy who was a member of the
gang. This shows how easily the gang gets loyal to T and leave behind their actual dedicated leader
Blackie. Candidates for and election often give treats to the voters and come with ideas that interests
the voters to make them more loyal but in reality its just a deception to make voters contend that they
are great.
The third theme conveyed is destruction of the class system. All the gang members come from a lower
class family and have inner resentment to those who have more than them. Especially T. because his
family has experienced higher class but know he has come down in the world. Greene shows the
feeling of resentment in T by showing a beautiful and expensive house owned my Mr. Thomas
completely destroyed because T, sub-consciously felt that destroying his house will bring equality.
Equality is brought up in this story which is reminiscent to the short story Harrison Bergeron where
everyone is equal by handicaps. Equality has always been a desired by the people from the lower class
families which helps us empathize the feeling of and justify the act of Ts cruelty.
The destructors important morals about innocence, loyalty and the destruction of the class system help
us understand our society better and empathize for the poor and needy and that is exactly why Graham
Greene wrote this short story.
By Abdullah Naeem

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