Marina Burnett 9C
The Destructors and The Lumber Room
Both short stories, “The Destructors”, by Graham Greene, and “The Lumber Room”, by Saki, deals with children and how they live their lives. The two stories deals with completely different group of kids. Graham Greene, in his story, narrates the days of a rebellious boys gang and discusses topics such as leadership, whilst Saki tells the story of a very intelligent little boy, which gets punished and makes use of this situation in his advantage by a very intelligent way. In his short story, Saki tries to portray the relationship between adults and children and show how sometimes adults can act so incorrectly before children.
Graham Green’s short story is set on post-war London and talks about several different themes including leadership, in my opinion, the most important and relevant one. When the leader boy, Trevor, enters the gang, he leads the gang to perform a sophisticated act of vandalism, of destroying an old man’s house, for no other reason than the pleasure of destroying. The boys don’t dislike the owner of the house and have no reason to do so. They do it as an entertainment, a creative act. “They worked with the seriousness of creators – and destruction is a form of creation.” Due to these boys and their violent act, an old man loss his house and the gang show no remorse or compassion for what they did to the owner of the home they destroyed. The author is seeking to convey, in my opinion, that children are just like the environment in which they live. Children grow to be the consequence of what is offered to them where they live, what they are used to, what they see on their daily life. For example, this gang, they grew up during war time, therefore they became violent individuals with no sense of peace or compassion for others.
