The Destructors & The Rocking-Horse Winner

Graham Greene's "The Destructors" and David H. Lawrence's "The Rocking-Horse Winner" share a common thread. Both short stories entertain while carrying a theme that revolves around destruction. In "The Destructors," we are treated to the antics of a group of children who destroy property because of the destruction they experience living in the shadows of the destruction of war. In "The Rocking-Horse Winner," a child is destroyed because of his mother's destructive obsession with wealth and materialism. In both "The Destructors" and "The Rocking-Horse Winner," the children succumb to the forces of destruction because of their "destructive" environments.

In "The Destructors," we see that the boys wish to destroy Mr. Thomas' home because it is a symbol of wealth in an environment otherwise devastated from the forces of war. Even though he gives them chocolates and permits them to play ball, the boys are emotionally scarred from the forces of war and do not trust Mr. Thomas. War has made them unable to trust in anything, knowing it can be brutally ripped away. Mr. Thomas' home represents a beauty to them they resent in such an environment, "It was the word beautiful that worried him that belonged to a class world that you could still see parodied at the Wormsley Common Empire" (Greene 386).

The boys are not blamed by Greene for their penchant for destruction. Rather, the author appears to blame a society that wi