Critical note on “The Destructors”

Critical note on "The Destructors"

The story, written by Graham Greene, mainly takes place in the area around a parking lot somewhere in post-war London. A group of kids called "the Wormsley Common gang" hang out at the parking lot, which borders to a house owned by a man they call Old Misery. After a votation the group decides to tear the house down when they hear that Old Misery, whose real name is Thomas, will be out of town for a few days. The plot circulates around the demolition of the house and the struggle for leadership over the group between the two members Blackie and T (Trevor).

The narrator only briefly describes the traits of the three main characters; Blackie, T and Thomas. At first Blackie is presented as the leader of the gang, a fair person with the group's best as his only intention. When the group agrees to implement with T's idea to destroy Old Misery's house, Blackie feels like he's losing his leadership and withdraws for a while, eventually he decides though that as long as the gang gain glory and stay prosperous he will not complain. Eventually the destruction starts to have set-backs, which lets Blackie regain some authority and the gang hierarchy starts to go back to normal.
Old Misery is described as a credulous old man who thinks that boys respect their elders in the same way they did when he was young. Sadly enough, his naïveté leads to the destruction of his beloved house.  

The point of view in the story is third-person omniscient. As the story goes on we are given insight to several people's thoughts and intentions, always from an outer perspective.

A consistent theme throughout the story is destruction. For some reason the boys seems to dislike the fact that in all the chaos after the bombing raids there is still beauty.
Whilst reading between the lines I sensed an underlying message, which I interpreted that the whole story was some kind of political satire. The final lines strengthened my suspicions: "'I'm sorry,' the driver said, making heroic efforts, but when he remembered the sudden check of his lorry, the crash of bricks falling, he became convulsed again. One moment the house had stood there with such dignity between the bomb-sites like a man in a top hat, and then, bang, crash, there wasn't anything left - not anything. He said, 'I'm sorry. I can't help it, Mr. Thomas. There's nothing personal, but you got to admit its funny". The highlighted text can represent the governing elite with their high hats who think so highly of themselves and in the end will be overthrown by the people on the bottom of society.

As I read the text I got the feeling that the story was a classic depiction of a power struggle between two forces. One thing that puzzled me was the difficulty to discern the good party from the bad. Since the story is mostly seen through the eyes of the boys, one is led to think of them as the good protagonists and Old Misery as the "evil" antagonist even though it is nearly impossible to make a clear line between good and bad. I think that the perspective should have been fixed at first-person to make the reader...