Who the protagonist in this story: Trevor, Blackie, or the gang? Who or what is the antagonist? Identify the conflicts in "The Destructors".

Walter Fischer

Identifying theandin s short story requires a departure from the conventional wisdom
regarding definitions for both characters. In The Destructors, the protagonist is Trevor, or
"T." as he is called by the other boys in the Wormsley Common gang. T. is anything but
heroic. He is the protagonist, however, because he is the central figure in the story and the
one who provides the motivation for the action that consumes most of the narrative: the
destruction of the Christopher Wren-designed house owned by Mr. Thomas, or Old Misery as the
boys call him. Not only is T. unheroic, he is most likely a psychopath. As Greenes unseen
narrator states regarding T.s ambitious plan to systematically destroy the house and the gangs
success in so doing, A kind of imagination had seen this house as it had now become. T.s
psychosis is also evident in the narrators description of the new gang leaders reaction to
the...