This essay compares and contrasts two short stories — Graham Greene's "The Destructors" and D.H. Lawrence's "The Rocking Horse Winner" — focusing on the emotional experiences of their characters. Both works feature children who are forced into premature maturity by adult circumstances, and both conclude with shocking acts of destruction. The essay examines how each story's children respond to the misery of the adults around them, how lovelessness and obsession replace healthy emotion, and how the destructive endings of each narrative can be compared and contrasted. The analysis reveals that in both stories, a lack of love gives way to destructive fixation, ultimately consuming the lives of those involved.
The paper demonstrates thematic comparative analysis: rather than summarizing each story separately, it groups both texts under shared conceptual headings (children, adults, endings) and moves fluidly between them within each section. This structure keeps the comparison active throughout rather than deferring it to a conclusion.
The essay opens with a brief introduction that frames the comparative task and previews the organizational plan. Two body sections follow — one focused on the child protagonists, one on the adult figures and their misery — each drawing on both texts. A final section addresses the endings, noting both parallel destructions and the key contrast between the death of a child and the ruin of an old man's life. The closing paragraph synthesizes the shared theme of lovelessness replaced by destructive obsession.
On the surface, "The Destructors" by Graham Greene and "The Rocking Horse Winner" by D.H. Lawrence have little in common. However, when the emotional impact of each plot on the various characters is considered, it becomes clear that there are many points of comparison. This essay compares and contrasts the emotions experienced by selected characters in each story. Issues such as the roles of children and adults, and the emotions each group experiences, are considered first. This is followed by a discussion of the endings of the two works. Each story concludes in a destruction that can be both compared and contrasted with the other.
Both stories feature children as their main characters, and in each case those children are somewhat unusual. In Greene's story, for example, Trevor has a distinctly dark character. At fifteen years of age he has a brooding temperament, and Greene suggests that it is as if he had never truly been a child. Much the same is true of Paul in Lawrence's story. The boy is forced into growing up quickly by the financial circumstances of his family. Paul and his two sisters are reminded on a constant basis of their parents' financial difficulties. This pressure manifests itself in the very voice of the house in which they live — a never-ending, urgent whisper demanding more money. The children are more aware than normal children should be of the necessity of money for well-being.
Paul eventually learns from his mother that the family's lack of money is directly connected to both her and his father's lack of luck. This prompts Paul's decidedly unchildlike search for luck, a search that culminates in a rocking horse. With the help of Bassett, the gardener, Paul begins betting on horses and wins with uncanny regularity. Later, when Paul is older, he keeps the rocking horse in his room, much to the dismay of his mother, who feels he has grown too old for it. This is a key point of contrast with Trevor in Greene's story: whereas Paul harbors the dichotomy of being too mature for his years while simultaneously being unable to let go of childhood, Trevor appears never to have been a child at all.
Trevor joins a gang of boys who congregate regularly in a bombed-out parking lot. Only one structure still stands amid the devastation — the house belonging to an old man named Thomas, whom the children call "Old Misery." In his better years Thomas had been known as a builder and decorator. After visiting the old man, Trevor devises a plan for the gang: he wants to destroy the house. His motivation is not immediately clear; however, as the story progresses, the reader comes to understand that Trevor has engaged in a kind of act of creative destruction. This interpretation is reinforced by Trevor's panic when Old Misery returns early and nearly disrupts their plans. Once the old man is dealt with, the destruction resumes, and the boys become so absorbed in it that everything outside the house is temporarily forgotten — even questions of gang leadership become subordinate to the collective act of tearing the place apart.
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