SOURCE: "Politics in Graham Greene's 'The Destructors'," in Southern Humanities Review, Vol. XII, No. 1, Winter, 1978, pp. 31-41.

Although Graham Greene's fiction has been widely praised and widely circulated, critics have focused rather narrowly on two exclusive features of it. Noting Greene's distinction between novels and "entertainments," they have provided genre studies; or, noting his Catholicism, they have discussed the religious themes in his fiction to the exclusion of other considerations. Such biases have resulted in oversights and distortions in the criticism of his work. For example, despite the genre studies just mentioned, critics have largely ignored Greene's short stories or deemed them unworthy of critical study. Greene himself relegated his short stories to an insignificant place in his canon (maintaining at most that he was a novelist who "happened to write short stories"), and scholars have taken him pretty much at his word.

In addition, their intense interest in Greene's religious theme has distracted them from a careful consideration of the social and political conflicts which are so often the source of the basic conflicts of his plots. As James L. McDonald asserts: "For far too many readers and critics, Greene is a 'Catholic' novelist." McDonald cogently argues [in "Graham Greene: A Reconsideration," Arizona Quarterly 27, 1971] that Greene's "deepest, most abiding concerns . . . have always been social and political, and only by recognizing them can we find a true unity and continuity in his career." Yet scholars have consistently failed to notice Greene's persistent concern with social and political issues, and the political substructure of Greene's writing remains largely unexplored.

In sum, then, scholars might have read Greene more closely, and they might have begun with his short story "The Destructors." It is a work rich in political implications, and Greene himself has recently said of it, "I believe I have never written anything better than 'The Destructors'. . . ." Nevertheless, many readers of the story are puzzled by it.

Obviously, a plot which involves the paradox of the artistic destruction of a fine work of art is strange, but it is considerably less so if one places the story and the characters in a more precise political and economic context. To do so reveals the story to be essentially a reflection of twentieth-century British politics—particularly the politics of blitzed England as Greene observed it from 1945 until his writing of the story in 1954. The Wormsley Common Gang epitomizes democratic socialism in conflict with privilege and conservatism, and "The Destructors," though certainly no mere political allegory, depicts a blitzed world in which the traditional values of beauty, grace, individualism, and class distinctions are succumbing to the new values of materialism, efficiency, democracy and group activity.

The story can be better understood when one recalls that the period from 1945 to 1951 witnessed the emergence of the Labour Party and sweeping social and economic reforms which represented the culmination of the decline of privilege. The First Reform Act of 1832 seriously called into question the privileged status of the aristocracy. King Edward's threat to create enough new peers to pass Lloyd George's "People's Budget" of 1909 if the House of Lords rejected it signaled another dramatic shift in the power structure of England. But the coup de grace came in 1945. The defeat of Churchill and the Conservatives in that year not only resulted in the formation under Attlee of the first majority Labour government but also marked a triumph for democratic socialism and a stunning blow to privilege. The nationalization of the Bank of England and other industries and the passage of the National Health Service Act of 1948 and other socialist programs marked a point of no return for England which Greene and other observers noted with mixed feelings. Out of this dynamic political situation "The Destructors" grew and developed in Greene's mind.

The "destructors" of the title are the members of the Wormsley Common Gang, a group of adolescent boys who presumably adopt a name for their gang from the geographical area of London where their activities are centered; but, of course, the name suggests both worms and commoners. The image of worms is picked up later in the story as Trevor explains the manner in which the gang would destroy Mr. Thomas's house: "'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—somehow.'" That the gang consists of commoners who scorn the upper classes is apparent in the attitude of its members toward the name and background of the newest member, Trevor:

When he said 'Trevor' it was a statement of fact, not as it would have been with the others a statement of shame or defiance. . . . There was every reason why T., as he was afterwards referred to, should have been an object of mockery—there was his name (and they substituted the initial because otherwise they had no excuse not to laugh at it), the fact that his father, a former architect and present clerk, had 'come down in the world' and that his mother considered herself better that the neighbours.

Thus, by joining the gang and, like more recent revolutionaries, changing his name, Trevor repudiates the class system.

The gang, however, is no rag-tag band of lawless revolutionaries. Indeed, as they work from the inside destroying Old Misery's house, they also, in many ways, conform to establishment traditions, as did the Labour Party. For example, though Trevor escapes the procedure somehow, the gang apparently sometimes accepts members through an "ignoble ceremony of initiation." Thus they follow establishment traditions of ceremonies and inaugurations, but these "ignoble ceremonies" parody those long-honored by the nobility. Indeed, the gang punctiliously observes its rules and operates in a decidedly democratic fashion. Trevor is required by the "rules to state his name." Though the gang is sceptical of Trevor's reasons for entering Old Misery's house, there is "nothing in the rules against it." Trevor, however, while in Old Misery's house, has missed voting on the day's activities; and Blackie informs him, "'You can't vote now. You know the rules.'" This observance of rules and democratic procedures—particularly of voting—is stressed thus several times in the story.

As always in politics, the question of leadership of the party becomes crucial. Indeed, the entire first section of the story is given over to the characterization of Trevor and Blackie and to their struggle for leadership of the gang. The opening line of the story appears to be an offhand remark that "it was on the eve of August Bank Holiday that the latest recruit became the leader of the Wormsley Common Gang." However, in the context of the story, with its emphasis on the democratic rule of the gang, the remark takes on more significance. It reveals that Blackie's fall and Trevor's rise to power are in accord with the tenet of democracy that there is no inherent or permanent position of rank or privilege and that even a neophyte can rise to leadership by demonstrating skill or charisma.

What qualities characterize Blackie's leadership? Generally, Blackie is serious, responsible, disciplined, but unimaginative. He is essentially the doer, the worker, and is miscast as theorizer. He customarily presided when the gang "met every morning in an impromptu car park, the site of the last bomb of the first blitz" and proposed each day a "plan of operations" on which the gang voted, generally such uninspired plans as snatching free bus rides from unwary conductors. Blackie and the gang show no awareness of the future or the need for long-range planning; similarly, they are ignorant of the past, as is evidenced by their reaction to Trevor's announcement that Mr. Thomas's house was built by Wren. An anonymous and representative voice of the gang responds:

'Who's Wren?'

'The man who built St. Paul's.'

'Who cares?' Blackie said. 'It's only Old Misery's.'

Blackie sees the house merely as property belonging to a privileged individual, not as an emblem of the continuity of the human race, not as a creation of artistic significance for the heritage of England. Like the whole gang, he is cut off from consecutive and humanistic values of the past, is temporally isolated in a modern blitzed world to which he responds on a day-to-day, "impromptu" basis in reaction to the conservative values of the past.

Indeed, Blackie wishes to spurn Old Misery and everything associated with him, but he assumes his responsibility as leader when the gang is confronted by the old man. Significantly, this confrontation is full of ambiguities, mistrust, and failures of communication or understanding. Old Misery accosts Mike, Blackie, and Summers as he returns from a trip to the market:

He said glumly, 'You belong to the lot that play in the car-park?'

Mike was about to answer when Blackie stopped him. As the leader he had responsibilities. 'Suppose we are?' he said ambiguously.

'I got some chocolates,' Mr. Thomas said. 'Don't like 'em myself. Here you are. Not enough to go round, I don't suppose. There never is,' he added with sombre conviction. He handed over three packets of Smarties.

The gang was puzzled and perturbed by this action and tried to explain it away. 'Bet someone dropped them and he picked 'em up,' somebody suggested.

'Pinched 'em and then got in a bleeding funk,' another thought aloud.

'It's a bribe,' Summers said. 'He wants us to stop bouncing balls on his wall.'

'We'll show him we don't take bribes,' Blackie said, and they sacrificed the whole morning to the game of bouncing that only Mike was young enough to enjoy. There was no sign from Mr. Thomas.

In their responses, the gang members epitomize the cynicism and self-righteousness so often manifested by opponents of political conservatives. Unable to believe that Old Misery is capable of genuine charity or generosity, they suspect him of having found or stolen the candy; but as children of the blitzed world, their understanding of sleazy politics based on the cash nexus leads them to conclude that the candy is a bribe, a conclusion in which Blackie quickly acquiesces and on which he formulates his policy of demonstrating through a juvenile game an unwillingness to compromise.

The gang's suspicion of the upper classes extends to Trevor also, even after he has been accepted as one of the gang. The boys question his motives for visiting Old Misery's house, conceding that the only possible reason one might do so would be to "pinch" something. When he denies having pinched anything, they gather around him: "It was as though an impromptu court were about to form and try some case of deviation." The reference to "deviation" and the formation of a kangaroo court remind the reader of the rhetoric and the show trials of various (though not exclusively) Marxist regimes of this century.

Blackie's plodding steadiness as well as his lack of imagination is reflected in his cool response to this situation. He did not wish to exclude Trevor because of his activities: "He [Blackie] was just, he had no jealousy"; but Trevor is expected to conform to discipline, and any hint of elitism is suspect. It was Trevor's use of the word beautiful to describe Old Misery's house that worried Blackie; it was a word "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."

Blackie's rigidity and isolationism, however, are precisely his limitations in Trevor's mind. As political philosopher, Trevor sees that knowledge is power and defends his consorting with Mr. Thomas by saying, "I found out things." As the only member of the gang who fully understands that Mr. Thomas's beautiful house, with its spiral staircase which is two hundred years old, is the very emblem of privilege and elitism, Trevor alone conceives of the significance of destroying the house. When he explains that Old Misery will be away on the Bank Holiday and that the gang can then break into the house, one of the boys again assumes that, in their customary way of combating the establishment, they will pinch things from the house. It is against such corruption by things that Blackie and Trevor must continually fight. Blackie, ever the pragmatist, objects, saying that they want no trouble with the law. Trevor, the idealist, objects on other grounds: "'I don't want to pinch anything. . . . I've got a better idea. . . . We'll pull it down. . . . We'll destroy it.'" Again, the pragmatic Blackie objects: "'There wouldn't be time. . . . I've seen housebreakers at work.'" Trevor responds with the timeless cry of the disestablished or disenfranchised: "'We'd organize.'" He also asserts that he has the knowledge necessary for accomplishing this destruction. Having presented this challenge to Blackie's leadership, Trevor even uses British political terminology in forcing the issue: "'You can stand down, Blackie, if you'd rather. . . .'"

In the portion of the story that follows, the dénouement of part one, the political implications are made even clearer. Blackie is voted down; he becomes a political cast-off. At first, as the gang pays "no more attention to him than to a stranger," Blackie is angry; but his pragmatism and his fidelity to the party win out over his personal depression. He realizes that the gang just might succeed in wrecking Old Misery's house, in which case "the fame of the Wormsley Common car-park gang would surely reach around London. . . . 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." Moments later, "Blackie realized he had raised his hand like any ordinary member of the gang." Ultimately, Blackie resumes a position of leadership within the gang, and the democratic process comes full circle in the story as, indeed, it did in Churchill's ouster and subsequent re-election; and surely this important contemporary political event must have lurked in Greene's consciousness as a kind of model for Blackie's career, though Blackie otherwise represents Churchill's antithesis and I would again caution against an allegorical reading in favor of a symbolic one.

This scene not only portrays Blackie as the committed worker, but it also portrays Trevor once more as the political theorist, the Trotsky of the group. In addition, it demonstrates the necessity of collaboration between worker and intellectual for the success of the group's schemes. Trevor conceives of the plan in the abstract and maneuvers politically to bring about its implementation. Moreover, he is at pains to preserve the purity of the concept. He insists later in the story that no one will take anything from the house, but that it will be destroyed absolutely; and when a gang member fears that each member will have to contribute to a collection to buy tools, Trevor reveals both his naïveté and his idealism in his arch reply: '"I don't want your money. But I can't buy a sledgehammer.'" Significantly, the pragmatic Blackie steps forward and says: "'They are working on No. 15. I know where they'll leave their stuff for Bank Holiday.'"

Section two of the story describes the beginning of the destruction of the house in such a fashion as to stress the commitment and the organization of the gang as they all share the labor of implementing their carefully-laid plan. Blackie, joining the group belatedly, "had at once the impression of organization, very different from the old happy-go-lucky ways under his leadership."

This section again reiterates the image of opposite forces working to sustain the project—i.e., the image of the pragmatic politico balanced against the party theorist. After all the other boys have left, T. discloses to Blackie a bundle of pound notes he has found in Old Misery's mattress. Immediately, Blackie asks, "'What are you going to do? Share them?'" Such a proposal seems practical and in accord with general socialist principles of sharing the wealth confiscated from the rich and privileged; but Trevor is the artist, the idealist, the theoretician, and here, at least, he thinks in terms of aesthetic rituals rather than pragmatic ends. He responds: "'We aren't thieves. . . . Nobody's going to steal anything from this house. I kept these for you and me—a celebration. . . . We'll burn them . . . one by one.'" However, Blackie cannot comprehend the intellectual theorizing of Trevor except in terms of simple vengeance. As the ash from the burning notes falls on their heads, Trevor says:

'I'd like to see Old Misery's face when we are through. . . .'

'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 . . . 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. 'I'll race you home, Blackie,' he said.

These things, in Trevor's mind, do not represent material wealth to be redistributed; rather they become material symbols of the established classes and of privilege, objects to be ritually destroyed in preparation for a new era.

This same emphasis on things and the absolute destruction of things as well as an emphasis on democratic procedures arises again in part three of the story when, as the boys convene for the second day of destruction, Summers protests that the activity is too much like work. Trevor responds sharply: '"You voted like the others. We are going to destroy this house. There won't be anything left when we've finished.'"

In this section, too, Trevor appears as the dreamer, Blackie as the worker. This characterization develops particularly out of the crisis which occurs when the boys discover that Old Misery is returning early from his holiday. Trevor momentarily panics as he begs for time to consider how to finish the project. As Blackie learned earlier in the story, Trevor now learns that "his authority had gone with his ambiguity. He was [now] only one of the gang."

Blackie—the doer, actor, worker—rescues the intellectual in distress. "T. stood with his back to the rubble like a boxer knocked groggy against the ropes. He had no words as his dreams shook and slid. Then Blackie acted before the gang had time to laugh, pushing Summers backward." Blackie whips the gang into line and then asks Trevor for his plan of action. Blackie "was the leader again," but now he merely implements Trevor's ideas and sees that the commands are executed.

Greene finally makes quite clear that the initial conflict has been fully resolved through collaboration. Caught up in the group enterprise, "the question of leadership no longer concerned the gang." However, Blackie's practicality remains useful; it is emphasized once again in passing in the concluding section of the story. The boys began to loosen the mortar between the bricks, but "they started too high, and it was Blackie who hit on the damp course and realized the work could be halved if they weakened the joints immediately above." Trevor is not mentioned at all in this last section of the story, his work—the planning of the destruction and the enactment of the ritualistic burning of the notes—presumably having been completed.

"The Destructors," however, is not merely a story about the struggle between two personality types for leadership of a gang any more than it is merely a story about the destruction of an old house by delinquent boys. That fact is made clear by the introduction of Old Misery as owner of the house that Wren built: "Old Misery—whose real name was Thomas—had once been a builder and decorator. He lived alone in the crippled house, doing for himself." The nickname given Mr. Thomas by the boys suggests not only the personal emotional state of the old man but also the unpleasant aspect of English traditions built on privilege and class distinctions—the old misery inflicted on the masses by the conservative ruling classes. Mr. Thomas's house, like the landed and hereditary houses of England, indeed the House of Lords itself, is "crippled," debilitated, and weakened: "Since the bombs fell something had gone wrong with the pipes of the house and Old Misery was too mean to spend money on the property. He could do the decorating himself at cost price, but he had never learnt plumbing." In like manner, the Conservatives had been builders and decorators; particularly in the midst of war, Churchill and the Conservatives had stood for outer strength, appearances and form, but they failed to understand the inner problems of the nation brought about by the war and could not mend them. A man living in the blitzed world depicted by Greene was no longer capable of "doing for himself; and the Labour Party's plans for nationalization and government assistance through democratic socialism pulled Churchill's house down around him.

Mr. Thomas, of course, never expects any accommodation with the Wormsley Common Gang. In a passage cited earlier, he approaches the gang "glumly." He voices "with sombre conviction" the conservative view that "there never is . . . enough to go round," the traditional assertion and complaint against Labour policies of providing welfare services such as those provided by the National Insurance Act of 1946 and the National Health Service instituted in 1948.

It is in section three of the story, however, that Old Misery most clearly epitomizes privilege and conservatism. The boys devise a scheme to lure Mr. Thomas to his outhouse and imprison him there so that they can complete the destruction of his house. (Incidentally, in the revised version in Collected Stories, Greene deliberately emphasizes the modernity of the boys by having them refer to the outhouse as the "lav" whereas Mr. Thomas consistently refers to it as the "loo"; in earlier versions, both the boys and Mr. Thomas use only the term "loo.") In leading him to the loo supposedly to rescue a boy who has gotten stuck there, the gang forces Mr. Thomas to climb his own garden wall, thus revealing to him that they have sometimes climbed it. His response is reactionary, possessive but traditionally polite, quaintly displaying the native courtesy of the privileged as well as the crotchety, authoritarian instincts which insist on deference and protocol.

'I'll have the wall built up,' Mr. Thomas said, 'I'll not have you boys coming over here, using my loo.' He stumbled on the path but the boy caught his elbow and supported him. Thank you, thank you, my boy,' he murmured automatically. . . . 'I'm not unreasonable. I don't mind you playing round the place Saturday mornings. Sometimes I like company. Only it's got to be regular. One of you asks leave and I say Yes. Sometimes I'll say No. Won't feel like it. And you come in at the front door and out at the back. No garden walls.'

The incongruity of Mr. Thomas's insistence on tradition and regular procedures at the very moment when he is about to become a political prisoner and when the final destruction of his house is going on a few yards away is overwhelming. He shares the naïveté of Churchill and other Conservatives who failed to grasp fully just how far England had come in 1945. Later, after being locked in his own loo, he "felt dithery and confused and old."

In the last scene of the story, Mr. Thomas is pictured as a pathetic old man who is outraged at the abrogation of his personal property rights. Conversely, almost everyone else in the last section views the destruction quite impersonally, including the unnamed representative of the gang who addresses the imprisoned Mr. Thomas:

'There's nothing personal,' the voice said. 'We want you to be comfortable tonight.'

'Tonight,' Mr. Thomas repeated increduously.

'Catch,' the voice said. 'Penny buns—we've buttered them, and sausage-rolls. We don't want you to starve, Mr. Thomas.'

The impersonal nature of this act is echoed by the lorry driver who unwittingly pulls down the house, not knowing that the boys have attached a line from the house to his lorry. After pulling down the house, the driver rescues Mr. Thomas from the loo, only to be confronted with the indignant and outraged old man who keeps reiterating "'My house'" (italics mine). The lorry driver apologizes for laughing at the incongruous scene of destruction as Mr. Thomas upbraids him:

'I'm sorry,' the driver said, making heroic efforts, but when he remembered the sudden check to his lorry, the crash of bricks falling, he became convulsed again. 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. He said, 'I'm sorry. I can't help it, Mr. Thomas. There's nothing personal, but you got to admit it's funny.'

Thus Trevor's prophecy that "not anything" would remain is fulfilled. The simile used to compare the dignity of the house to that of a "man in a top hat" is the final identification of the house with the privileged class, and it is, of course, the same image which comes to Blackie's mind when Trevor uses the word beautiful earlier in the story to describe Mr. Thomas's house. In addition, the lorry driver's echo of the nameless boy's earlier plea that "there's nothing personal" not only reflects the impersonal nature of modern life but also reinforces Trevor's earlier disdain for human emotions and his insistence that there are only "things." Thus the gang symbolically destroys not only class distinctions and privilege but also dehumanizes "itself" in the process by stressing neither beauty, individuality, love, nor grace but efficiency, democracy, collaboration, and unemotional commitment to group action.

As Mr. Thomas's house falls, the story stands—complete, unified, closely woven. Yet it remains puzzling to many readers; and in conclusion, it seems worthwhile to consider the source of this effect. I should like to suggest tentatively that the source of that puzzlement resides both in Greene's own ambiguity regarding the changing political guard and also in the distance between his own religious conservatism and the general secular liberalism of most of his readers today.

As an artist, Greene certainly must be aware that art and beauty traditionally have been the private province or concern of the aristocratic classes in Europe, and he naturally enough values the grace and elegance preserved through that conservative tradition as in Wren's architecture or other esthetic monuments. Yet as a modern intellectual very much in touch with contemporary politics, he certainly must be equally aware of the social inequities often fostered by that conservative tradition. However, the irony of that paradox is doubled, for the system which purports to correct those inequities—especially as the Labour Party attempted to correct them in England—too frequently substitutes a New Misery for an Old Misery, a blitzed, impersonal world without any esthetic sensibility or any sense of history. Thus, the ambiguous effect of the story lies partly in this double paradox inherent in the spirit of the author.

Secondly, Greene's Catholic bias tends to make him sceptical of any temporal order; and though many contemporary readers may instinctively identify with the democratic procedures and the collaborative efforts of the Wormsley Common Gang, Greene himself is much more ambivalent toward worldly reformers or revolutionaries as is evidenced in many of his works—The Power and the Glory, Brighton Rock, and The Honorary Consul, to name but three. This distance between the world-view (or other-world view) of Greene and the Weltanschauung of the contemporary secular reader is also, then, a source of the puzzlement often produced by "The Destructors."

Finally, however, the story satisfies the close reader by its perfect balance of one political viewpoint against another as the image of the spiral staircase held in suspension by "opposite forces" epitomizes the story, and these political viewpoints are much better understood when seen in the light of English politics of the decade immediately preceding the writing of the story.