Metaphors In The Destructors

Darkness surrounded them as they hid underground. Men, women, and children huddled together, a single prayer leaving their collective lips; and that was a prayer for survival. The crash of bombs that rained down overhead seemed endless. With each strike, the bricks supporting their underground haven cracked, sending mortar dust flying around them. It was the Blitz of 1940, and no one in London was safe. For years to come, fear and anger leached into society, cultivating jealousy and resentment in those that lost everything. For some, it does not take much to unleash the demons kept bridled in the deep recesses of their mind. For Trevor, the lead protagonist and symbol of the covetousness nature of humans in Graham Greene’s, The Destructors, it took the loss of everything he once knew for his demons to break free their bonds in a fury of destruction.

It was within this war torn town that grew the Wormsley Common Gang; a group of troubled teens that searched out ways to wreak havoc within their community. The boys of the Wormsley Common Gang met in an empty parking lot, their surroundings still screaming of the bombs that rained down a decade past— except Mr. Thomas’ house. Wrongfully coined, “Old Misery,” Mr. Thomas’ home was said to have, “stuck up like a jagged tooth” (Greene 106) in the landscape that was still, nearly a decade after the Blitz, war-torn and left in ruin. His home stood as a mockery to those that lost everything; especially for