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The Destructors Conflict

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The types of conflict, such as Man vs. Nature and Man vs. Man, seen in Graham Greene’s “The Destructors” impact the story in a way that reinforces and justifies the unlikely positions of its characters as protagonists and antagonists. Trevor is the new Wormsley Common Gang leader. He takes his gang to destroy Mr. Thomas’s home while Mr. Thomas is away. Previously, Trevor had created a plan to demolish the house within two days. When they start to destroy the house from the inside, the gang has to work long and hard to be able to completely finish everything before Mr. Thomas comes back. Because of its stable condition, the house is difficult for the gang to tear up; it takes the gang nearly all day on the first day to get to a good stopping point, and they become rushed when Mr. Thomas makes an early and unexpected return the next day. This can be seen when the gang first starts to tear apart the inside of the house: “The interior of the house was being carefully demolished without touching the outer walls. Summers with hammer and chisel was ripping out the skirting-boards in the ground floor dining-room . . . In the same room Joe was heaving up the parquet blocks . . .” (Greene 110). The conflict that best matches this situation is Man vs. Nature because Trevor and his gang are facing opposition caused by time and the house. The house itself is acting as an antagonist: it is a force pitted against …show more content…

The difficulty of destroying the house reinforces this and justifies the role of Trevor, and even the gang in this case, as protagonists because they are the ones that are facing and trying to overcome the complications that the house

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