“The Destructors” & “The Child by Tiger”

The Destructors

"The Destructors" disturbed its readers, yet it remains one of Greene's most anthologized short stories. Despite its setting in post-World War II England, the story is universal in its reflection of human nature. The story contains many of Greene's hallmarks, most importantly that of placing people who have the capacity for good and evil in situations where they must make a choice between the two. The boys in "The Destructors" are still young enough to be innocent, yet they make cruel and selfish choices.

Themes and Meanings

Innocence

The reader's first impression of “The Destructors” is that the story is a simple chronicle of senseless violence and wanton destruction carried out by thoughtless, unprincipled adolescents. Graham Greene's story, however, is actually a metaphor for class struggle in English society to the decade following World War II. The boys in "The Destructors" are in their teens, which are the age at which childish innocence is gradually left behind in favor of worldliness and sophistication. The tension between working-class Britain and the upper-middle-class society that had absorbed all but the last vestiges of the nobility had surfaced dramatically in the years following the last world war. (Graham, 2009, 479)

These years were marked by repeated challenges, both social and political, to the established order of an empire in decline. Old Misery's house somehow survived the battering of a second great war, as did the monarchy and the entrenched class sensibility of British society. The house, however, is considerably weakened, held in place by wooden struts that brace the exterior walls. In its fragile state, it needs support, as does the political and social structure that it represents. It cannot stand as it once did, independent with the formidable strength of the British Empire. The interior, although a trove of revered ...