Innocence
The boys in “The Destructors” are in their teens, which is the age at which childish innocence is gradually left behind in favor of worldliness and sophistication. For the boys in the story, however, their innocence is already gone, replaced by cynicism, selfishness, and rebelliousness. When Mr. Thomas arrives home early, T. is surprised because the old man had told him he would be gone longer. Greene writes, ”He protested with the fury of the child he had never been.” Not only have these boys grown up during the war years, they live in an environment that serves as a constant reminder of that harrowing experience. They meet in a parking lot near an area that was destroyed by bombs during the war, and they are seemingly unaffected by it because it is such a normal part of their life. In reality, the war years have claimed their youthful innocence, leaving them disillusioned and determined to create their own world order, but all they really know is destruction.
Part of innocence is surrender to the imagination. In “The Destructors,” however, imagination takes an ugly turn. T. uses his imagination to devise the plan to destroy Mr. Thomas’s house. Greene writes that the boys “worked with the seriousness of creators—and destruction after all is a form of creation. A kind of imagination had seen this house as it had now become.” The imagination used to plot the demise of the house is the opposite of the imagination used to create it. In innocence, a person’s imagination is applied to think of a better world, but the boys have lost their innocence. They can only imagine a worse world.
Power
“The Destructors” is a study of shifting power. Blackie initially holds the power of leadership in the gang, and he is a basically good leader. Although he encourages mischief, it is the kind that does not hurt anyone. In his hands, power is the ability to lead others. When T. takes over leadership, however, the gang changes dramatically. He gets the members to participate in a cruel plan to destroy an innocent man’s home, a home that is a treasured piece of England’s past. In T.’s hands, power is the ability to destroy. His brand of leadership is different; when Blackie arrives on the first morning of the destruction (the day after T. assumes leadership), “He had at once the impression of organization, very different from the old happy-go-lucky ways under his leadership.” When Summers arrives on the second morning, voicing his preference to do something more fun that day, T. will not hear of it. T. knows he is more powerful than Summers is, so he reminds him that the job is not done and that Summers himself voted in favor of the project. He succeeds in pressuring the boy to stay and help finish the destruction.
In the changing social structure of this small community, the balance of power is shifting. The boys forcibly take power in the community, and it is executable power. They have the ability to make changes in people’s lives and to intimidate others. Mr. Thomas, on the other hand, thinks he has power that he no longer possesses. He believes that he has authority based on the social order of the past, in which he, as an elder in the community, would be respected and obeyed. The shift in power seen in “The Destructors” signals the changing social order and does not bode well for the future.
Source:
Thomas E. Barden – Short Stories for Students – Presenting Analysis, Context & Criticism on Commonly Studied Short Stories, vol. 14, Graham Greene – Published by Gale Cengage Learning.