Trevor Is Not Justified In Graham Greene's 'The Destructors'

The Destructors Essay Nine years after the bombing of England by the Nazi Germans in WWII, families and children there still struggle to live normal lives again and some never knowing what normal is. Growing up and living with cities destroyed and rules not very enforced, children grow accustomed to these lives of destruction. In “The Destructors” by Graham Greene, Trevor (“T”) is justified in destroying Old Misery’s house based on his own perspective. Trevor is just a kid who has grown up in a broken world, and he feels that if he doesn’t steal anything then he is doing nothing wrong. Trevor has gone through a lot in his life, and to Trevor things being taken away from him has become a lifestyle so he doesn't think it is wrong when he takes from someone else. With Trevor’s father losing his job, his mother pretending like she is still better than

Trevor finds a wad of money in Old Misery’s house when destroying it and brings the money to Blackie, who assumes they are going to keep the money, but Trevor claims they “‘aren’t thieves,’” and that he didn’t want “‘to steal anything from this house’” (Greene 55). Trevor and the gang only destroyed everything in the house never stealing anything which leads him to assume he has done nothing unjust. Trevor also believed he was in the right, because he didn’t mean anything personal to Old Misery. He saw Old Misery as someone who was just standing in the way of his plans, and he didn’t mean for Old Misery’s life to fall apart just like the house, but it did. In Trevor’s mind he had done nothing wrong, because to him people just have to do what is necessary living in the world that he is, and for Trevor, taking down that house was necessary and not stealing anything made it