The Destructors

In the years leading up to and during World War II, the world saw many populist leaders, such as Adolf Hitler in Germany, come to power only to lead their countries to disaster. Since the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century, power had been shifting from religious institutions to secular ones responsive to popular opinion. People attended church less often, and intellectuals in the Western world were increasingly more likely to be atheists or agnostics. As a Catholic, Greene regarded these shifts in power with trepidation. Scientific advances and technological mastery call for moral guidance and yet they undermine sources of value and meaning. Ordinary people were gaining more say in government but had fewer moral reference points to guide the use of that power.

Despite being new to the Wormsley Common Gang, T seizes control with ease. He simply does some research, proposes a clear plan, and speaks to the gang’s vanity. Even Blackie, the thwarted former leader, conforms to T’s agenda when he realizes it will make the gang famous, even to the grown-up gangs. This new leadership escalates the gang’s activities from petty pranks to newsworthy crime. Even though the increased risk causes the gang to hesitate briefly, they quickly rationalize, as Summers does, that they’ve never heard of anyone “going to prison for breaking things” (7). T’s confidence and the thrill of fame facilitate this turn for the worse.

Before T’s leadership, the reader sees the gang put almost every issue to a vote. After the change in command, however, T no longer asks the gang for their opinions. He simply tells them what to do. When Summers fatigues from destroying the house and asks if they’ve done enough, T ignores his request and says they’ve “hardly started” (12). When Blackie suggests sharing the money that T finds in Old Misery’s mattress, T immediately decrees that “nobody’s going to steal anything from this house” (11). He not only decides what they are going to do, but he also instructs Blackie on the nature of reality: “There’s only things, Blackie” (11). The gang shifts from a democracy to a dictatorship—and they barely seem to recognize it. Greene may intend these passages as a reference to Hitler and many other autocrats who gain office through democratic institutions and then undermine those institutions to retain their grasp on power.

Later, power shifts back to Blackie, momentarily, when Old Misery returns and T’s plan becomes ambiguous. It would’ve been easy for Greene to remove this blip in T’s leadership, especially since Blackie and the gang quickly return once again to T’s command. Here, Greene seems to be underlining how easily power can shift when it is guided only by populist impulses. Leaders, cultural trends, and intellectual schools of thought come and go, and the gang (perhaps like the wider society) has no reliable reference point.