Compare the leadership styles of Trevor and Blackie in "The Destructors".
Blackie looks upon his gang as a kind of extended family, something that provides security and protection against a harsh, unforgiving world. To a large extent, he is the product of his environment, as with all the other members of the Wormsley Common Gang. Trevor, on the other hand, comes from a relatively well-off background. He sees the gang as little more than an instrument of control, an opportunity for him to wreak revenge on a society that has reduced the economic status of his family.
That's why it's his idea to destroy the old house; it represents everything he's come to despise about his life. The other boys go along with his plan, but to them it's just a gigantic lark; they really don't know any better. Blackie's leadership is based on a sense of comradeship and fellow feeling with boys who'd shared the same experiences. Trevor, on the...
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other hand, is not just an outsider, he's also a user. The boys in the gang mean nothing to him; he's not remotely interested in their best interests. Instead, he just wants to manipulate the boys to get what he wants.
I think that Blackie's leadership model is geared more towards the greater good than Trevor's. Prior to Trevor asserting control, Blackie demonstrated himself to be a leader that was more concerned with the group remaining intact and as a collective unit. Trevor's plan to destroy the house seems more individualistic. His leadership model is driven to satisfy his own agenda. This is realized when the group starts to question why they are doing what they are doing. Trevor cannot give them any justification on a group or collective level because this was never part of their "buy in." Part of the reason that the group gravitates back to Blackie is because he has focused on the group's well being and status as part of his consciousness. Even when ousted from leadership, his frame of reference is one that is driven by the group's interest as opposed to his own. It is here in which the leadership style of each is fundamentally different. Trevor is unable to maintain the cohesiveness of the group because he never leads with the group in mind. To put it in another way, Blackie demonstrates a leadership model that is intended to serve the needs of the group, as a whole, while Trevor's is more individualistic.
In "The Destructors", how would you classify characters Trevor and Blackie?
Blackie is a good example of a character type known as the "flat" character. Flat characters usually play a minor role in a work of fiction and exhibit one or two traits. Blackie, the erstwhile leader of the Wormsley Common gang, is quickly marginalized in the narrative when he is replaced by Trevor as the gang's leader. Trevor's audacious plan captures the imagination of the other boys, and Blackie is relegated to the sidelines. Blackie embodies impotent anger; he cannot compete with Trevor and has no hope of regaining his leadership role. His lack of imagination in planning the boys' exploits is sharply contrasted with Trevor's cleverness.
Trevor is the story's protagonist; he moves against the antagonist, which is the house—that is to say what the house represents—as he plots its destruction. The house represents the social class that has recently rejected his family. Trevor could also be considered an anti-hero because his values can not be deemed universally admirable. He is lashing out against a system that has harmed him but is going about it in a way that hurts Old Misery and manipulates the other boys.
You have asked a very good question focussing on characterisation of the two main characters in the gang. What is interesting about Trevor is that we are not given access as readers to any of his thoughts, so we have to infer his motives for organising and accomplishing the destruction of Old Misery's House. He is clearly a dynamic character in that he provides the initiative and the plan and the energy to mobilise and organise the gang in order to destroy the house. Yet he is also clearly emotionally disturbed and detached from everyone and everything around him. Consider the following quote:
"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.
Trevor is a character who is so emotionally divorced from the world that he destroys without passion and is not able to feel emotion. Thus to him, the destruction is actually an act of creation as it expresses his nihilistic attitude towards the world and his rejection of everything that the world values.
Blackie is perhaps a simpler character, the initial leader of the gang who resumes his post of leadership towards the end of the story. When T. usurps his leadership, initially he is annoyed and "dimly aware of the fickleness of favour", but then, thinking of the fame this endeavour could gain for the gang, he is quite willing to return and become a member of the gang under T's leadership in order to achieve this feat:
Driven by the pure, simple, and altruistic ambition of fame for the gang, Blackie came back to where T. stood in the shadow of Misery's wall.
Blackie is not so focussed on power that he is not willing to be a part of this scheme, but it is clear from his conversations with T. that he does not fully understand or share T.'s nihilistic outlook on the world.