The first two stories we read in
this course were “When Greek Meets Greek” and “The Destructors.” Obviously, the
former is one of Greene’s entertainments. Oddly enough though, I prefer the
frightening and powerful mood of “The Destructors.” I guess that this is
because the story is just plain cool. Even its name is cool. But just think
about the plot of this story – a gang of kids completely destroys an old man’s
house for seemingly no reason. The story raises a lot of questions, all of
which lead back to the one central question about this story: Why?
This story is short, but it is
really dense. The whole time, I was questioning why Trevor wanted to destroy
the house, why he burned the money, why the gang went along with it, and why
Trevor never wanted that house to be able to be rebuilt. Once Trevor decides
that they’ll destroy the house, the plot is fairly simple. There are plenty of
things to examine throughout the story, but after that point Greene kept me
thinking about the underlying question of why this whole thing was happening. And
then there’s that scene with Trevor burning the money. I forget how old Trevor
is, but that scene was awesome. Two kids, sitting in a house they were in the
middle of destroying, burning money. It’s simple, it’s scary, and it was cool.
I am convinced that this scene with Trevor had some influence on Christopher
Nolan when he wrote The Dark Knight
(the greatest movie of all time).
And
the character of Trevor is just awesome. Sure, Greene hints at little things
that might have pushed the kid off the edge, but, as far as we know, Trevor has
no motivation. For me, this was one of the coolest parts of the story, and
makes Trevor just that much cooler. Here’s the way I like to think about it:
What if Trevor had told the gang that he wanted to destroy the house because he
thought that it was ugly or because he hated Old Misery or because seeing the
destruction of World War II had affected his fragile psyche causing him to do
unspeakable things? I don’t think that
the story would have been that interesting then. There are so many
possibilities for Trevor. It reminds me of a theory by a Confucian philosopher
that Mr. Hannon told me about in the last trimester. This guy believed that
human beings are inherently evil. He says that people seek to do good things.
However, one does not seek what one already has. Therefore, people seek to do
good because they do not naturally have it. Maybe that’s all that we can
understand about Trevor. Maybe he is just evil. But, again, that’s the great thing
about him. We can come up with so many different interpretations of who he is
and what his motivations are, and no good idea can ever really trump another
good idea in this case.
To me, this is the story to start
off a Graham Greene course off with. It’s easy to read, gripping, cool, and
extremely thought provoking.
3 comments:
I totally identify with your love for the character of Trevor. Especially in what Greene would call an "entertainment," the development of the antagonist is among the most important duties of a writer. While Batman is a memorable hero, it is the Joker that truly makes The Dark Knight the movie we all love. But it’s not just The Dark Knight: so many great movies, including The Godfather (Parts I & II), Star Wars, Citizen Kane, The Silence of the Lambs, and countless others, are driven by characters that we love to hate. I think Greene realizes that we love to hate characters like the Joker, Michael, Vader, Kane and Lecter because we wonder what makes them tick. Though Trevor is not as evil as any of these characters, his motivation is just as interesting as those of the aforementioned villains because his actions are equally foreign and, at times, inexplicable.
To emphasize Michael's point regarding Trevor's mysterious nature, I would like to point out that the class compared Trevor to Heath Ledger's Joker (pretty much evil incarnate), Tyler Durden (psycho), and has pointed out several equally plausible causes of Trevor's behavior. All of that...for the child featured in a 15-page short story! Graham Greene wrote in "The Quiet American" that one human can never fully understand another; our several guesses regarding Trevor's motives best demonstrates this principle. Also, I agree with Michael when he says that this story is good to kick off the course with. It was compact, raised tons of questions, and had a very interesting plot.
In general, I like villains. I find it fascinating to see their motivation, to see why, exactly, they have become the "bad guy" and to examine the path that took them there. Now, the obvious problem with this is that there simply is no motivation behind Trevor - he doesn't do what he does out of hatred, or greed, or some misplaced sense of honor or justice, he just does it. So then how do we rationalize this? Well, the short answer is: we don't. I don't necessarily agree with Michael when he says that Trevor can be whoever we want him to be. I think that the point of the character is that he isn't what we want him to be, he isn't what we expect to see, and that mystifies us (or me, at least.) The complete lack of motivation is disturbing, and it certainly does make us wonder why. But the infuriating part is that we simply don't have an answer. We can speculate all we want, but it just doesn't get us anywhere, because at the end of the day, it's not about the money, and it's not even about sending a message. It simply is.
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