Who is the protagonist and antagonist in "The Destructors"? Identify the conflicts.

I would argue that T is the protagonist in that he's the one responsible for the main action in the story; he's the one who comes up with the idea of destroying Old Misery's house. That being the case, Old Misery would be the antagonist. Or, to be more precise, it's the traditional society that he represents which so antagonizes T.

T's family have come down in the world, and so T deeply resents his lower social status. He's come to feel a deep-seated resentment against society and all it represents. Inciting the Wormsley Common Gang to a mindless act of destruction is his way of getting back at society in which he no longer feels he belongs. T has been in conflict with society ever since his family came down in the world. Bitter and twisted, he's been itching at the chance to take his revenge. Old Misery's house presents him with just such an opportunity.

And once that big old house has been reduced to a heap of smoldering ruins, T has finally achieved some resolution to his long-standing conflict with society and all that it represents. But this is only partial resolution. T still hates society with a passion, and one senses there are many more such mindless acts of destruction to come.

Identifying the protagonist and antagonist in Graham Greene’s short story “The Destructors” requires a departure from the conventional wisdom regarding definitions for both characters. In “The Destructors,” the protagonist is Trevor, or "T." as he is called by the other boys in the Wormsley Common gang. T. is anything but heroic. He is the protagonist, however, because he is the central figure in the story and the one who provides the motivation for the action that consumes most of the narrative: the destruction of the Christopher Wren-designed house owned by Mr. Thomas, or Old Misery as the boys call him. Not only is T. unheroic, he is most likely a psychopath. As Greene’s unseen narrator states regarding T.’s ambitious plan to systematically destroy the house and the gang’s success in so doing, “A kind of imagination had seen this house as it had now become.” T.’s psychosis is also evident in the narrator’s description of the new gang leader’s reaction to the news that Mr. Thomas is returning early from holiday:

“Old Misery,” Mike said. “He’s on his way.” He put his head between his knees and retched. “Ran all the way,” he said with pride.
 “But why?” T. said. “He told me. . . ” He protested with the fury of the child he had never been, “It isn’t fair.”

If T. is the protagonist, then the antagonist is Old Misery. Mr. Thomas is the antagonist solely because he would, if he could, defy T.’s actions and do everything in his power to stop them. The way Greene presents his story, one expects Mr. Thomas to be a harsh, unfriendly tyrant. There is nothing in this story, however, to suggest that he is anything other than an aging pensioner simply going about his business. In fact, when T. visits Mr. Thomas’s house and asks to view the interior, the old man graciously invites him in, unaware that the visit is a ruse to surveil the abode in preparation for the plan to destroy it.

The conflicts in “The Destructors” are several. Most importantly, of course, is the conflict between the gang and Mr. Thomas and his house. This conflict is central to the story. The boys hold no serious animus toward the old man. They merely wish to enhance their reputation by performing grand acts of little consequence. T.’s idea to destroy the house represents a major departure from the suggestions previously offered by the gang’s previous leader, Blackie. The reference to Blackie leads to the second conflict, that between him and T. for leadership of the gang. Blackie is the victim of a rather discreet coup d’état, dethroned by T.’s reputation for silently brooding and, more importantly, for coming up with the audacious plan regarding the house.

Another conflict in Greene’s story involves the Wormsley Common gang’s war with civilization. Like most gangs, the boys in this one seek to rebel against conventions. They are very young and limited in their capacity for felonious behavior (that is, until T. enters the picture) but aim to make their mark as outlaws any way they can.

In Graham Greene's post World War II tale, Trevor is the protagonist, who represents the nihilistic attitudes and behavior prevalent in the period after the destruction of London. His conflict develops from his rejection of everything that pre-War London, represented by Old Misery, valued.

The son of an architect, now only a clerk, Trevor has moved into a neighborhood quite below the social status to which his parents are accustomed. Since the boys with whom he becomes acquainted are not of his ilk, he vies for the top position in the gang by devising a plan to destroy the beautiful, albeit "crippled" home of Old Misery, a former builder himself. This act of destruction committed while Misery, who is on a three-day bank holiday, is not without a creative process as T, (whose aristocratic name has been cut) has determined that the gang will take it apart from the inside "like worms." While he orders the destruction of the interior and all its contents, T. yet retains some ethics: He does not want any theft; in fact, he orders Old Misery's banknotes burned and, later, food taken to Mr. Thomas, who has been locked in his outdoor lavatory [loo]. Nevertheless, the boys are devoid of any sympathy or other genuine feelings about Mr. Thomas's loss of home. As a result, they enter into conflict with many of the pre-war, old world moral issues represented by Old Misery; that is, those that forbid delinquency, trespass, and destruction.

What are the conflicts in "The Destructors" by Graham Greene?

A main conflict in the story is between the old, ordered, pre-World War II way of life and the literal leveling and destruction the Wormsley Common Gang see all around them in the aftermath of the war.

In the early 1950s, London had still hardly been rebuilt after the massive destruction of the repeated bombings it endured in World War II. One house, however, stands tall amid the bombed rumble: a carefully maintained architectural treasure designed and built by Christopher Wren, who also designed St. Paul's cathedral.

When T calls the house beautiful, which he has toured simply by asking the owner to see it, Blackie, the head of the gang, feels uneasy:

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 a monocle, with a haw-haw accent.

The boys decide to vandalize and destroy this architectural treasure—and succeed in doing so.

This act represents multiple levels of conflict. By doing this, the boys put themselves in conflict with the law. They also put themselves in conflict with the ideals of the past. As Blackie's discomfort with the word "beautiful" indicates, they want to destroy that past. While not stated overtly, the implication is that the boys hold the values of the past responsible for the present devastation in which they live. The past has a deceptive and an ambivalent beauty that has to be destroyed. This destruction, however, puts the boys in conflict with themselves: they are destroying a house they also grudgingly admire.

As the above quote about the top hat suggests, the lower class boys additionally feel in conflict with the English class system that has oppressed them: in destroying the house, they symbolically attempt to destroy class distinctions. When the truck driver who unwittingly aids in the destruction laughs and thinks it is funny, this also represents a class conflict: the ascendant new working class doesn't understand the values of the old world.

One of the conflicts in "The Destructors" is about who will lead the Wormsley Common gang. To date, Blackie has run the gang, and he has devoted his gang to activities such as getting free rides on buses. However, over time, Trevor, or T. as he is known, becomes the leader of the gang and devotes the gang to different types of activities.

Another conflict that T. introduces into the gang is that of class. He is clearly from a higher class than the rest of the gang, as his father, now a clerk, used to be an architect, and "his mother considered herself better than the neighbors." When T. describes Old Misery's house as "beautiful," another member of the gang reacts to his wording. Blackie thinks:

Who are the protagonist and antagonist in 'The Destructors'?

The story is set among the ruins created by German bombing during World War II. These children whom the author calls "the Destructors" have grown up during the bombing raids, and their reaction to the destruction has been somewhat different from that of the adults. The children thought that the explosions and fires were glorious and exciting. The deaths were things that happened to other people. If they had been older they would have been able to cause greater destruction with bullets and bombs, but they have missed a golden opportunity. They have come to love destruction. In normal times they would have grown up to be normal boys, but in abnormal times they have grown up to be little savages. The real protagonist and antagonist in this war story are Britain and Germany. Germany might be considered the protagonist because we only see the destruction wrought by their bombing planes as well as their V1 and V2 rockets. That would make Britain the antagonist. Even though the war is over, the conflict lingers on in the children. It will take perhaps a hundred years for all the aftereffects of such a great war to be resolved and forgotten. It might be said that this terrible destruction of a priceless house is just another minor event in the war, something like an aftershock following an earthquake. The war is over, but there are still countless wounded to be cared for, orphans to be housed and educated, ruins to be torn down and trucked away, new buildings to be constructed on the ravaged sites. And there are millions of veterans and civilians all over Europe and even in America who have been so badly psychologically injured that they will never recover completely. The situation portrayed in Graham Greene's story is duplicated by inference in Germany, Austria, the Soviet Union, Italy, and elsewhere. In some parts of Europe many children are even worse off than those in "The Destructors." Small orphaned children on the continent are living on their own among the ruins and scavenging for food. "The Destructors" only depicts an incident in an all-out war between nations. 

The protagonist in "The Destructors" is the Wormsley Common Gang; their objective in the story is to completely raze the magnificent house owned by Mr. Thomas to the ground, leaving nothing behind.  The reader could interpret the story as having multiple antagonists. 

Society: First, the antagonist could be society in general, because one of the primary conflicts in the story is man versus society.  The Wormsley Common gang wants to destroy the old house, because they are rebelling against the image it projects of upperclass society.

The House:  The house itself could be viewed as an antagonist, because the boys work against the fixtures and structure in their collaborative attempt to destroy it.

Mr. Thomas:  Mr. Thomas is the most obvious choice as antagonist, because the boys attempt to circumvent his authority by destroying his house and locking him in the outhouse.

Who is the protagonist in "The Destructors"?

Another argument can be made for England as the protagonist, represented by the old, traditional house that remains standing. The boys who destroy it are the young, disaffected generation, who represent the antagonists.

Graham Greene's story exemplifies the destruction of values resulting from the bombings of London. If a gentleman's class could engage in such brutal actions as warfare, why should not the youth imitate these acts of devaluation, subjugation, and deprivation? This is what the disaffected generation of working class British find themselves doing. Thus, the story is a metaphor for the class struggle and the emotional impact of a war in the time following World War II.

The house is held up by outside braces in the forms of wooden struts, the objective correlatives of the weakened British Empire and its ruling class, whose political and social structure is crumbling. The boys are lead first by Blackie, who distrusts completely the upper class in the form of Mr. Thomas, known as Old Misery. He simply wants to sneak into the house, but not steal anything; however, Trevor, who wants to be called "T" as he rejects his upper class name, becomes the leader and insists upon taking the house apart piece by piece until it crumbles.

Trevor represents nihilism, the sense of nothingness. He tells Blackie, 

"All this hate and love...it's soft, it's hooey. There's only things, Blackie...We are going to destroy this house. There won't be anything left when we've finished."

The boys' actions are an act of destruction and antagonism toward the owner, Old Misery, who is completely victimized. For, when he returns from a holiday, he is held hostage in his loo. Old Misery is unable to stop the destruction of his house as he hears the sounds of sawing. The next morning a driver comes for his lorry (truck), and, as he starts to drive, he becomes aware of a voice shouting; it is the victimized Mr. Thomas, the owner of the sole house remaining in the neighborhood. It is too late, however, because the lorry driver has pulled forward, is momentarily halted, and then moves on to the sound of a "long rumbling crash."

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.

The delinquent gang has razed the stately house of Old Misery. London has lost its voice of reason and custom, a respect for dignity, represented by the old house.

Trevor is the protagonist of Graham Greene's short story "The Destructors."  As the central conflict of the story unfolds, the reader sees that the Wormsley Common gang yearns to prove themselves as a real gang; the destruction of Old Misery's house would solidify their place in society.  In this context, the primary conflict is man versus society as the boys attempt to prove themselves to society by destroying Mr. Thomas' grand old house, an iconic symbol of the upper class prestige.  Two central antagonists emerge as possible threats to Trevor and to the gang's attempts to destroy the house: Blackie and Mr. Thomas.  Blackie deliberately tries to undermine T's leadership to take control of the gang for himself, whereas Mr. Thomas as antagonist must be contained in order for the boys to finish their wholesale destruction of his home. 

What are the themes in Graham Greene's "The Destructors"?

Graham Greene's short story "The Destructors" utilizes the contrast between Old Misery's house and the Wormsley Common gang to depict the theme of Old England versus the new up-and-coming, post-war generation.  With salient details concerning the richness of the architecture like the spiral staircase and imagery that compared the house to a gentleman's top hat, Greene constructs a metaphor for Mr. Thomas' house representing the old, wealthy upper class society of the pre-World War II era; meanwhile, the boys in the "Wormsley Common gang" are exactly what their name suggests--common boys, the lower class. 

By the end of the story as Mr. Thomas' house collapses ruinously to the ground, Greene suggests that the former division between upper and lower class have shattered as a result of the shared hardship of post-war England; the boys' defiant act resonates as a rebellious step toward ending the social hierarchy.

Who or what is the antagonist in "The Destructors" by Graham Greene?

It would be easy, and indeed justifiable, to assume that the antagonist in “The Destructors” is Trevor, who usurps Blackie’s crown and initiates the demolition project; or the entire gang of boys, all complicit in the destruction of an innocent man’s home; or even that innocent man himself, Old Misery, the aging, lonely antithesis to the boys’ youth and cynicism.

It seems, however, that all these people are simply victims of their own circumstance, and it is this post-war social circumstance that is the real antagonist in the story.  The story takes place amid a period of shifting balance of power; Mr. Thomas’s home represents the wealth of the upper classes; the gang of boys the ire of the destitute; the destruction the unrest of the lower classes and their bid for power within a stratified society bilaterally wracked by hardship.  The lower classes resent the privilege of the wealthy and feel a biting need to fight against it.  One could even argue that the war itself is responsible for leaving the boys broken and cynical and disaffected, intent on disaster and addicted to chaos, and that therefore the severity of wartime is the antagonistic catalyst for the main action of the story.

What is the main theme of "The Destructors" by Graham Greene?

Greene's story contains different themes that could be seen as important to its overall meaning.  I would suggest that one of these themes is how power is fluid in the modern setting.  Power is shown to be a fluid construct both within the gang and in the world in which the children inhabit.  The meeting place of the gang as a hollowed out parking lot, bombed and destroyed, is a reflection of how power and authority, itself, not a totalizing and static reality.  Like the bombs that drop and destroy, power is constantly remaking itself.  Blackie's role of power in the gang is challenged with T.'s desire to destroy Thomas' house.  This shift in power, and eventually the shift back to Blackie, is reflective of Greene's main point about power.  It changes.  It is a fluid concept.  It is not absolute and static in its perception.  

At the same time, I think that power is shown to be something far from totalizing and constant.  Mr. Thomas shows this in his experience.  He starts off the narrative believing that he has power only to find that he has been locked into a bathroom and discarded, his voice silent. When he is released, he finds his house destroyed.  Reflective of how his power has disappeared, the lorry driver laughs at Mr. Thomas' misfortune, indicating that it is "nothing personal."  In this light, Mr. Thomas' predicament highlights how power is fluid.  His life has changed from at one point possessing it, and now is in a position where it is absent from his own being.  It is something that has gone from his being and his struggle is adapting to a life where there is no power of which to speak.  Power is shown to be a shifting quality, and one that makes one's life difficult to endure without it.  It is here in which the shift of power and its fluid quality can be seen as a main theme of Greene's work.

Who is the antagonist in "The Destructors"?

Arguably, the antagonist in "The Destructors" is the setting itself: post–World War II London.

Many of the children in London were evacuated during the bombings and went through a prolonged period of separation, fear, and confusion. The new leader of the gang, Trevor, whose upper-class name is rejected by the others as he becomes known only as T., represents the nihilism that came about because of the destruction of London and the deprivations that families suffered. Also, the loss of Trevor's prestigious name also signifies the loss of prestige suffered by Trevor's father, who "came down in the world."

After so many buildings and homes have been destroyed in London, and with T.'s father having been a former architect, it is possible that the new leader of the gang feels a certain resentment toward Old Misery. His house has suffered no injury, while all the houses around it have been destroyed. Added to this is the fact Old Misery, whose real name is Thomas, was also a builder and decorator at one time. In this house, there is evidence of Old Misery's talent—there is a marvelously designed winding staircase that has been created by using opposing forces rather than any support. 

T. decides that the gang will destroy the house, proposing a creative method of destruction: they will dismantle everything piece by piece and leave the outer appearance of the house intact. T. tells his group to "be like worms." When they finish, the walls will still be intact, so nothing will be suspected, but the entire inside of the house will be destroyed. T. instructs the boys to smash all the china and glass and ornaments, tear up papers, cut up pillows, and rip sheets. Later T. burns Old Misery's money, and they smash the furniture.

"You hate him a lot?" Blackie asked.
"Of course, I don't hate him," T. said. "There'd be no fun if I hated him.... All this hate and love," he said, "it's soft, it's hooey. There's only things, Blackie...."

T. thinks about how the destruction will be in the papers the next day. When Old Misery arrives home sooner than they expect, the boys trick him and he enters the lavatory outside. Then someone locks him inside the lavatory so that the boys can complete their destruction. The next day, a truck driver goes to work after the bank holiday. When he gets in his truck, which he has parked by Old Misery's house, he does not realize that the boys have tied the struts of the house to his vehicle. When he pulls away, he pulls down the house. 

Who is the protagonist in "The Destructors"?

T. is the protagonist of "The Destructors," as he is the new leader of the teenaged boys' gang as the story opens, and his desire to destroy Old Misery's house drives the plot.

To some, T. seems more antagonist than protagonist, but like Little Alex in Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, T. functions as a nihilistic antihero. Some might want to think of Mr. Thomas, the old-fashioned and elderly owner of the house, as the protagonist, but his role is too small. The house, which some readers root for to survive, even as it is being dismantled, can also seem like the protagonist, but its role is too passive. Because most of the other characters in the story see it as a thing, we tend to as well: Greene does not personify it as Bradbury does the house in "There Will Come Soft Rains."

Through casting T. as the active protagonist in this short story, Graham Greene is making a comment on the state of British society in the 1950s. T. is the person whose destructive act of demolishing the house gets the appreciative laughter of the truck driver. In dismantling the old house, the boys "worked with the seriousness of creators—and destruction after all is a form of creation."