The Destructors

“It was the word ‘beautiful’ that worried him—that belonged to a class world that you could still see parodied at the Wormsley Common Empire by a man wearing a top hat and monocle, with a haw-haw accent.”

One cause of Blackie’s suspicion of beauty is the tension between working-class and upper-class people in postwar England. Working-class people—many of them now unhoused and bereaved—needed practical solutions to material problems, such as the scarcity of shelter, food, water, and plumbing. The immaterial concerns of art, culture, and religion were beside the point, and Blackie—and the audiences at the Wormsley Common Empire—considered something as inessential as “beauty” to be worthy of mockery.

“We’d be like worms, don’t you see, in an apple. When we came out again there’d be nothing there, no staircase, no panels, nothing but just walls, and then we’d make the walls fall down.”

The reference to worms in an apple is likely an allusion to the apple in the Garden of Eden. The forbidden apple in Genesis comes from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. In “The Destructors,” the knowledge that is so threatening is scientific and technological. If secular thinking were to take over, it could destroy morality and religion, much in the way the boys intend to destroy Old Misery’s house.

“‘He’ll tell you,’ Blackie said. It was the end of his leadership.”

Greene illustrates the public’s need for clear answers and direction, and its willingness to abandon the mysteries of religion. People, he seems to suggest, are more inclined to follow someone with a plan regardless of whether the goals of the plan are logical. Blackie doesn’t know how to proceed, so he yields power to T.

“Blackie was dimly aware of the fickleness of favour. He thought of going home, of never returning, of letting them all discover the hollowness of T’s leadership, but suppose after all what T proposed was possible—nothing like it had ever been done before. The fame of the Wormsley Common car-park gang would surely reach around London. There would be headlines in the papers. Even the grown-up gangs who ran the betting at the all-in wrestling and the barrow-boys would hear with respect of how Old Misery’s house had been destroyed. Driven by the pure, simple and altruistic ambition of fame for the gang, Blackie came back to where T stood in the shadow of Old Misery’s wall.”

Greene saw religion as a dependable, stabilizing force that isn’t susceptible to the vicissitudes of popular opinion. Blackie, removed from power, chafes at the fickleness of his friends, but—just as impressionable as they—he conforms to the new leadership because he believes it will lead to fame. His motivation is vanity, which is a Christian sin, and his allegiance lacks integrity. The use of the word “altruistic” here is ironic.

“It was as though this plan had been with him all his life, pondered through the seasons, now in his fifteenth year crystallized with the pain of puberty.”

Greene saw secular, science-bound thinking as a relatively new approach compared to the ancient traditions of faith. T, as a personification of this philosophical materialism, is an adolescent. Because of his youth, drive, and willingness to act, he well might destroy something beautiful as the Scientific Revolution destroyed earlier cultural traditions. Arguably, the demolition of Old Misery’s house is an act borne out of the pain of World War II.

“Blackie lumbered nearer with the saw and the sledgehammer. Perhaps after all nobody had turned up: the plan had been a wild invention: they had woken wiser. But when he came close to the back door he could hear a confusion of sound hardly louder than a hive in swarm: a clickety-clack, a bang bang, a scraping, a creaking, a sudden painful crack. He thought: it’s true, and whistled.”

This is the only moment where Blackie expresses reservations about destroying the house. He believes it would be “wiser” to abandon the plan. However, when he sees that everyone has already gotten to work, he is so impressed that he whistles. He has confused what is impressive with what is right. Though he is the story’s second most important character (i.e., the deuteragonist), he is as close as the story gets to a conscience.

“He had at once the impression of organization […] Summers with hammer and chisel was ripping out the skirting-boards in the ground-floor dining-room: he had already smashed the panels of the door. In the same room Joe was heaving up the parquet blocks, exposing the soft wood floorboards over the cellar. Coils of wire came out of the damaged skirting and Mike sat happily on the floor clipping wires.”

Throughout “The Destructors,” Greene offers many examples of irony. The gang’s organized project results only in chaos. Even if Mike is happy, most readers cannot help but be horrified by what these boys are doing to an innocent man’s house. This quote is also an allegory for the rigors of science, which, though impressive, lead to the worst horrors of World War II.

“They worked with the seriousness of creators—and destruction after all is a form of creation.”

This passage is another example of irony. “Creation” and “destruction” are of course antonyms, but destruction can lead to change. Destroying a house or a religion makes way for something new, but it can be hard for many readers to see the creative value of the boys destroying a man’s home. This is irony that veers into nihilism.

“‘Of course I don’t hate him,’ T said. ‘There’d be no fun if I hated him.’ The last burning note illuminated his brooding face. ‘All this hate and love,’ he said, ‘it’s soft, it’s hooey. There’s only things, Blackie,’ and he looked round the room crowded with the unfamiliar shadows of half things, broken things, former things.”

T is a personification of philosophical materialism, and this quote provides textual evidence for this interpretation. Philosophical materialism posits that nothing exists beyond matter—beyond “things” that can be measured or will be able to be measured in the future. Immaterial things are considered not real. Greene finds this approach to reality ominous.

“Facades were valuable. They could build inside again more beautifully than before. This could again be a home. He said angrily, ‘We’ve got to finish.’”

This is the only time the reader sees T panic. It is not enough for T, as a personification of philosophical materialism, to damage Old Misery’s house, which is a symbol of religion. He has to obliterate it entirely. He’s willing to risk his safety and freedom and that of the entire gang to accomplish this goal.

“‘I’ll fix it. I swear I’ll fix it.’ But his authority had gone with his ambiguity.”

The gang was happy to follow T’s lead when he had a clear plan, but when the pressure is on and he scrambles to solve the problem of Old Misery’s return, the gang loses confidence in him. Here, Greene is satirizing the human tendency to trust a leader’s plan just because it is a plan, even if its goal is illogical. He is illustrating humanity’s fickleness and frequent distrust in humankind.

“‘Do you know what my horoscope said yesterday? “Abstain from any dealings in first half of week. Danger of serious crash.” That might be on this path,’ Mr. Thomas said. ‘They speak in parables and double meanings.’”

Perhaps to strike a balance analogous to the floating staircase, Greene doesn’t hesitate to portray Old Misery, a personification of faith, as also being superstitious. The old man even dismisses horoscopes as speaking in parables and double meanings, in much the same way Bible verses speak in parables and double meanings. In this case, Old Misery’s horoscope offers what could have been helpful information, even if it is vague.

“‘There’s nothing personal,’ the voice said. ‘We want you to be comfortable tonight.’”

Christians believe in a personal God—that is, a God who has a personal relationship with everyone. This deity, who cares about right, wrong, and the human soul, is quite unlike the indifferent universe portrayed by philosophical materialists. The boys in this quote adhere to the belief that immaterial concepts such as personal animosity are at best socially constructed and not necessarily real or important. Their destruction is the more upsetting because it is not animated by hatred, greed, or other discernible emotion. It derives, instead, from a nihilistic drive to logically order their lives to achieve illogical ends.