In Graham Greene’s “The Destructors,” T has an ultimate plan for the decaying London society; find followers to bring chaos to an already chaotic society. “Crystallized with the pain of puberty,” (116) T is no longer a child and has plans for a society that favors the wealthy. T convinces the gang to stop stealing train rides and help destroy the last piece of corrupted society; Old Misery. T took the lump of clay that was Blackie’s gang, and molded them into his own personal demolition crew. Though Blackie saw the “hollowness of T’s leadership,” (115) he and the rest of the boys followed his plan and achieved T’s goal. The word hollowness reflects T’s personality in that T concerns himself only with destruction and disorder and nothing else. With his motives to bring destruction, T is a trickster calling out to society with a message to stop society’s corruption and greed.
Transitioning from childhood to adulthood, T is not like the other boys in the Wormsley Common Gang. He chooses not to participate in the childish activities Blackie and the others engage in like stealing train rides. He finds more interest in his ultimate plan to bring down Old Misery. Though T acts mature, there are specks of immaturity because he still has fun racing Blackie home after the job is done (118). T still wants to have fun, yet he is still charged with trying to rally the troops together to destroy Old Misery’s home.
With a society that fails to help most of its inhabitants, T feels that the Wormsley Common Gang should bind together to destroy the opposition. When T first arrives, the gang sees something different about T besides his age. When T mentioned he was once called Trevor, “it was a statement of fact, nor as it would have been with the others a statement of shame or defiance” (111). Formally of the upper echelon, T no longer associates himself with the society that he is longer a part of him. T is not ashamed of his real name, yet ‘Trevor’ serves as a reminder to the material beliefs he once held. T’s elder status and his appeal to the younger boys to destroy a house wins him approval with the gang, even Blackie at the end. The gang asks of T when he breaks into Old Misery why he didn’t steal anything. T promptly answers ““I don’t want to pinch anything,” T said. “I’ve got a better idea.” (114)”” Instead of wanting to take whatever valuables are left inside of Old Misery’s, T proposes to destroy the house and everything inside, leaving only the skeleton. T plays on the idea that if the gang works together, they can accomplish anything. Since the gang are presumably victims of the bombings as well, they should stick together and destroy anything that remains. T wants the house destroyed because the house represents the part of society he thinks is corrupted.
Old Misery and his house are the reflection of the society that T wants destroyed; the corrupted part. Old Misery has money to fix the house, yet he is “too mean to spend money on the property” (112). He would rather keep the money for himself, buying food for himself while his property rots from the inside out. The house has a lot of value on the inside to fix the outside, yet no work goes into fixing the damage. Old Misery’s house has been destroyed from the inside out because “something had gone wrong with the pipes of the house” (112). The pipes show that society has been destroyed from the inside, causing the rest of the property to decay. The wealthy spent most of its money on tangible items rather than be concerned with others well-beings. Though Old Misery seems to represent somebody T would hate, T says he doesn’t hate Old Misery because “[t]here’d be no fun if [he] hated him” (118). T doesn’t seem to hate the society he lives in; just the acts society does.
T was once a member of this corrupted society, but appears that he has come to terms with his mistakes. He once found pleasure in concerning himself with riches to preoccupy himself, but lost everything in the end. T sees the items inside of Old Misery and says to Blackie, ““[T]here’s only things, Blackie,” and he looked round the room crowded with the unfamiliar shadows of half things, broken things, former things (118).”” T sees the items inside of the house, reminding him of the life that he once had. Forced into a world that is unfamiliar to him after the bombings, T wants to send a message that people have let objects define them. When destruction comes however, the items are meaningless and all that is left is the person. This message parallels the ideals of Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight.
The Joker and T uphold very similar principles when they look at society. The Joker does not care about money or anything valuable, but enjoys destroying those who see money and power as the only means of self-fulfillment. He enjoys the simple things in life like “knives, gunpowder, and gasoline. And the one thing about them is that they’re cheap.” The Joker enjoys taking simple inexpensive tools of destruction and using them to destroy everything the wealthy desire. The Joker, like T, is an agent of chaos who is charged with teaching the corrupt and the wealthy a lesson that their objects and earthly desires are meaningless. They go about it by manipulating those with the power in society, and use their strength to spread their philosophies of destruction. They don’t care much for tangible objects or money, but would “rather just watch the world burn.” The Joker and T ultimately act like prophets of destruction to society.
The trickster acts like a prophet in “The Destructors,” warning the characters of problems that may not be completely obvious. T was a victim of the bombings and wants to warn those that if people continue to put their faith in money rather than people, then they are doomed if some tragic accident were to occur. The gang was so concerned about their image and the money inside Old Misery’s, which the gang neglected to see that the gang had come together under a common task. Greene conveys a message that the trickster here is to teach readers a lesson, rather than manipulate and take advantage of a situation. While the gang followed T’s plan, they were brought together and destroyed what was left of a corrupted London society. Greene’s catholic background seemingly presents the gang as the image of a church, who comes together under a common principle to rid society of its greed and corruption.
For Old Misery’s to be destroyed and some order to be restored, T had to bring chaos to an already chaotic society. T was the prophet charged with trying to show people the error of their ways and he used chaos and destruction as his bible. Greene uses the gang almost like a church to show that when people unite under a common cause, they can bring great change to society. Though chaos caused disorder throughout the story, chaos and destruction ultimately restore order to London.
Works Cited
Greene, Graham. “The Destructors.” Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense 10th ed. Ed. Thomas R. Arp and Greg Johnson. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009.
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What Writing Should Be
During the last ten weeks, I have tried to undergo a drastic change from putting random thoughts together, to an attempt at making a carefully constructed paper that flows. The first two papers I handed in were examples of the former; they looked ok, but didn’t hold together. The poetry paper was an absolute mess in terms of content and language, while the fiction paper had more language problems. These papers were stepping stones to become a better writer, and now I feel I can write a paper then I could at the beginning of term. Good writing must have a balance between intellect and structure, and not constructed completely by randomness.
While it is these random thoughts that help to spark new ideas for future paragraphs, too much randomness hurt my arguments and my grade. I felt this was abundant in the fiction paper. I thought I had a good idea for a thesis, yet by the end of the paper I was way off from what I started. I forgot to support the arguments I was making in each paragraph. The randomness sparked because I did not stick closely to the text as much as I thought. The text is there to keep the paper focused so I cannot get too off track. Sadly, I did not use the text as much and would go off on opinionated rants on each character and their significance. When I talked about Blackie on the first paragraph on pg.3, I stereotyped him as a typical boy without using the text to back up my claim. Though the argument can be made that we weren’t allowed to use outside sources, I still failed to use quotes by Blackie to prove a point. Though this was not the only example in the paper, the point conveys I need so stick directly to text to not lose focus.
To make writing better, I’ve been concentrating on each individual paragraph and making the parts focused one at a time before trying to do the paper in one attempt. I’ve been writing papers too often using this technique and often the papers come out sloppy. By focusing my energy into each paragraph, I can get a tighter focus and there is little room for me ranting. Making each paragraph its own little essay helps to develop solid points and helps to transition to the next little essay. I tried to do this in the poetry paper in my examples of Marvell’s vegetable love and rubies, yet my interpretation of vegetable love was a bit shaky and that paragraph began a downward spiral and ultimately ended with me ranting of how men are pigs and how pre-material sex is wrong. As previously stated, it’s important to stick to the text closely because one little mistake and the paper can take a turn for the worse.
One of the things Professor Daniels really stressed this year, especially in my writing, was the way I construct sentences. How a sentence is worded determines exactly what is argued, and even one wrong word leads to a different argument. One such example I won’t forget is in the fiction paper in my second paragraph. I called the gang an “image of a metaphor of a child.” This is a confusing sentence, and poor proof reading on my part. I should have said image and left out the word metaphor completely. I come off very casual when I write a paper instead of trying to use complex phrases because I have known this style of writing the longest. My writing hasn’t evolved since my senior year and it is my fault for not trying new techniques. Like the gang in The Destructors, I must grow up too because my writing needs to improve if I ever want to make law school a goal.
In the end, I have learned a lot about myself through my writing and the criticisms I have received. My writing tends to talk a lot about ideas I see and my own opinions of the text. While it is good to be vocal and express an opinion, I have to decrease how much of my own voice I put in a paper and concentrate on the critical analysis of each poem/story. An essay is supposed to be carefully thought out and not be constructed by any thought that comes to mind, but be a critical approach to a piece of literature. There should be an opinion present, but it should not overtake the paper and get away from the real focus; analyzing literature and what the author wanted to convey. Balance is the key to write a clean and effective paper and with the drama paper, I intend to do this.
-Joel Novick
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