STORIES OF OURSELVES

        Graham Greene usually wrote in a fast-moving, dramatic style. His style is made from combining thrilling elements of plot with an inescapably sad mood, as he focuses on big problems and complexities that the characters face. Many of the characters in the story face problems involving religion, especially Catholicism, and most of the time, Graham Greene tends to judge his characters. Something we found out was that, the characters in the story struggle with moral problems but his style is not moralistic.

 

        Another important detail noticed in the story “The Destructors” was that, Graham Greene tends to frequently use similes and metaphors to increase the visual impact and vividness to the readers. “We'd be like worms, don't you see, in an apple”

 

        In the story Greene demonstrates the instability of after-war England in his demonstration of two conflicting sides, one being “The destructors” and the other being the civilization of the country. These sides also demonstrate a society that survived the trauma and was greatly affected by it.

 

        Another thing I noticed in the story was that Greene had paradoxes in his story, which are used to explain the atmosphere of the gang in the story. This is shown in T.’s attitude toward Mr. Thomas. At one point, he decides to rampage Mr. Thomas’s house. However at other times, T. does not hate him, instead he’s kind while offering him food and blankets. Therefore, in my opinion, the idea of destroying Mr. Thomas’s is not intentional, but simply done because of his want to get rid of the beautiful yet unsettling images of war battlefields. Another example of paradox is the truck driver, who commits the final act of destruction to the house. While the reader expects him to react with feelings of guilt or dreadfulness, the driver unexpectedly bursts into laughter while saying “You got to admit its funny.”