The
Integrity of the Original Text
by
Matthew
Johnson
One of
the most basic and therefore furthest-reaching mistakes we can make when
analyzing a piece of literature is to assume that it could have been
written other than it was—that some other point of view or plot
structure could have produced the same effect but in a more pleasing
way. In reality, this is
like saying that a certain combination of genes could have produced the
same person, only more intelligent or better looking.
A piece of literature depends on all its component parts for its
total effect; changing the point of view or character motivation will
result in a completely different piece.
An analysis of Graham Greene’s “The Destructors” will serve
as an example.
It would
be tempting at first glance to give Trevor a conventional motive for his
actions, and in fact the story gives evidence to support this
conclusion. As early as the
second paragraph we discover that his father, a “former architect and
present clerk,” has “come down in the world” (608).
T. is not his father’s son in a merely biological sense; he
displays an abnormal interest in Old Misery’s house (609), even going
so far as to call the architecture “beautiful” (610).
He demonstrates an equal aptitude for the profession when he
destroys Misery’s house with such precision.
We have here the beginnings of a basic psychological motive:
The child, seeing a symbol of his father’s humiliation, lashes
out and destroys that symbol as a form of retribution.
Several facts contradict this interpretation, or at least throw
it into doubt. First, T.
flat-out denies any animosity toward Old Misery during his conversation
with Blackie over the burning money; he says that hatred is “soft,
it’s hooey. There’s
only things, Blackie” (614). This
is, of course, worthless by itself. We learn early that as readers we cannot trust speakers—or
even narrators, when they participate in the action—to tell the truth.
We require corroboration; and find it by looking backward.
Earlier in the story, when making his proposal to the gang, T.
remarks that “there [won’t] be anything left to pinch after we’[ve]
finished.” He makes this remark “without the smallest flicker of
glee” (611). A
strange kind of revenge, that which elicits no joy from its perpetrator.
He could be under the sway of some other emotion—guilty
compulsion, perhaps—but he displays no sign of this, either.
Correction: He
displays no sign of guilt, to the gang or anyone else.
Greene does in fact indicate that Trevor’s desire to destroy
the house is a compulsion of sorts: “it was as though this plan had
been with him all his life, . . .[and had] now. . .crystallized with the
pain of puberty” (611). Trevor carries this compulsion so far by the end of the story
that it has overwhelmed any sense of self-preservation; he is willing to
stay in the house past the time when it is safe, he is even willing to
reveal his identity to Old Misery, as long as the house is well and
truly destroyed. To the
rest of the gang the destruction feels “like work” (614), but T.
continues. He shatters and destroys like a man possessed.
Or a man inspired; it seems our fearless leader has a touch of
the artistic temperament.
Greene draws this comparison in several places, starting with the
title. “Destructors” is
a play on the word “constructors,” suggesting more than a casual
link between building an object and destroying it.
He expounds upon it in his description of the gang’s attitude:
“they worked with the seriousness of creators—and destruction
after all is a form of creation” (613).
Using their tools—hacksaw, sledgehammer, chisel—and their
material—Old Misery’s house—they create a new object:
a half thing, a broken thing, a former thing (614).
One last example of this comparison illustrates Trevor’s motive
perfectly. When describing
the innards of Old Misery’s house to the rest of the gang, T. uses the
word “beautiful.” He
does not use this word idly; he knows beauty in architecture, knows it
from his father’s teaching if nothing else.
His next thought is that it should be destroyed.
He traverses the gulf between these two thoughts as though that
gulf does not exist. The
assumption that this is a crime of vengeance—again, the logical first
assumption—seems insufficient to describe this gulf and his later
behavior. T. is not
concerned with the discrepancy between his father’s lifestyle and Old
Misery’s; the house symbolizes not his father’s fall from grace, but
something altogether more expansive.
Consider Greene’s description of the old house:
damaged by German bombs, true, but not destroyed as were the
other houses, “saved so narrowly. . .from destruction” (615).
It is very beautiful in the conventional architectural sense, and
in fact is the only object in the story described as beautiful (or
pretty, etc.). As any
decent Grecian urn will tell you, however, an object cannot be beautiful
if it is not true. The
house, in its beauty, represents the opposite of the life the boys are
living. Their world is an
ugly place, and the house’s beauty is thus an affront to truth—and,
by extension, to beauty as well. Beauty
negates itself; ugliness is what is required here.
When T. succeeds, nothing remains of the old glory.
He creates an ugly but true object out of a pretty but false
one—“true” and “false” being matters of his own perception. R. A. Scott-James made a statement that seems particularly
apt here: “[T]here are
characteristics of modern life in general which can only be summed up. .
.by the word modernism. [It]
may not be very pleasant to delicate ears, but perhaps what it expresses
is not a very pleasant thing” (Qtd. in Stevenson 2).
Trevor lives in a world where traditional values have been
reversed or muddled. Beauty—conventional
beauty—is so out-of-place as to invite its own destruction, and that
destruction itself becomes an act of creation, the creation of an object
that is less beautiful and for that very reason better suited to its
time and place. This
confusion and combination of traditionally opposite values forms the
basis of this story’s theme. Not
the whole thing, though; we must also determine how Graham Greene treats
this worldview—and how he forces the reader to treat it.
Fortunately, this explanation should be comparatively brief.
Since conflict is one of the building blocks of literature, we
would expect to find in any story a series of conflicting elements or
oppositions. We have
already discussed two such oppositions in “The Destructors”:
The opposition between creation and destruction and the
opposition between beauty and ugliness.
Trevor, through his actions, presents us with more contradictory
or opposing pairs. He
displays cruelty in his destruction of the house and kindness in his
treatment of the old man; he acts alternately like a brooding adult and
a petulant child; he appreciates beauty but feels compelled to destroy
it. Greene eschews the
traditional hero-villain setup in favor of an anti-hero, a character
that contains both the positive and negative halves of an opposition.
Actually, an anti-hero may be more aptly defined as a character
that could become a villain with only a change of focus.
This certainly holds true for Trevor.
He may have both light and dark sides to his character, but the
dark clearly dominates. Yet
we sympathize with him, see his obvious intelligence and potential to be
something more than a mere hooligan, even as his inhuman side repels us. This sympathy for a character does not occur accidentally;
Graham Greene manufactures it by focusing on Trevor more than the other
characters, making them essentially peripheral and him central. Point of view also reflects tone, or the author’s own
feelings toward the characters and events in a story.
Analyzing point of view in this manner, we find that Greene’s
feelings for Trevor mirror those stated above.
This should not be surprising.
He created the character, after all, and in a way all our
responses are reflections of his own.
Point of view in “The Destructors” plays another role beyond
those listed above: It
fleshes out the skeleton of a theme provided by T.’s motivation—the
loss of traditional values with nothing to replace them.
Greene could have written the story from another point of view,
say from Blackie’s perspective or first-person inside Trevor’s mind.
But doing either would have made “The Destructors” a
different story with an entirely different theme.
More distance from Trevor would have made him a villain, less
distance perhaps an object of pity or a martyr.
Either way, Greene would have been discussing the dearth of
values in modern society while providing a set of his own for everyone
to follow. The theme may not make everyone happy, but Greene chose it
and made the form an integral part of it.
Works Cited
Greene, Graham.
“The Destructors.” Fictions. Eds.
Joseph F. Trimmer and C. Wade Jennings.
4th ed.
Fort Worth:
Harcourt, 1998.
Keats, John.
“Ode on a Grecian Urn.”
Representative
Poetry Online.
U of Toronto.
<http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/keats19.html>
Stevenson, Randall.
Modern Fiction: An Introduction.
New York:
Harvester, 1992.