The Destructors by Graham Greene and The rocking Horse Winner by D.H.Lawrence - Essay Example

Paul in the ‘Rocking Horse Winner’ comes to know that his mother does not love him as much as she loved her daughters, and had also started hating her husband as he fails to make good money. The boy gets a rocking horse as a gift on Christmas and starts riding it daily. Later on he is introduced into horse racing and starts betting on horses with the help of his gardener Basset. With his help they see more money, but the mother isn’t satisfied. In the end the boy wins a major bet and makes his mother rich, while he dies.

The main protagonist of the second story is a boy named T, and his group of friends called the ‘Wormsley Common Gang’. The story revolves round the destructive habit of kids living at a place ravaged by war. The gang under T makes a plan to destroy a very old house, belonging to a man named ‘The Old Misery’, while the person is on a holiday. The boys destroy the house inside out, but the owner returns earlier than expected, leading the boys to lock him up in the outhouse. With the final destruction being done by a lorry, the owner of the house is released then, and he is left with the damaged house and a broken heart.

The main theme of the story revolves around a certain thought, that ‘destruction is another form of creation.’ The protagonist for the both the stories are small boys, with ‘The Destructor’ set in the times after World War II, where the boy is an isolated teenager, and the ‘The Rocking Horse Winner’ having a setup where the protagonist’s father is reduced to a clerk and the family faces a lot of troubles. The main theme of ‘The Rocking Horse Winner’ revolves around the desperation and the urge of a young boy to be bestowed with luck, whereas the main theme of ‘The Destructors’ revolves around hidden motivations and the destructive habits of kids post World War II and the idea that destruction is another form of creation.

In ‘The Rocking Horse Winner’, the family is shattered by the ill luck of the father that reduces the family position in the society to a baser value; the most affected being the mother. The boy, not having received much love from his mother, always longed for that and wanted to see her happy. He is isolated and mixes well with the gardener. His desperation makes him take up betting and ultimately winning a big amount of money for his mother. In ‘The Destructor’ the boy, in a similar manner, is also isolated as their city is ravaged by war and his father having failed as an architect, being reduced to a clerk, and the dissatisfied mother leaving the poor boy no choice but to be with the local gang.

Both the stories revolve around a particular occurrence where the mother is dissatisfied and does not love the child. The stories weave an extraordinary sense of motivation around the central characters. Both of them succeed in reaching their goals, T in destroying the house and Paul in making a lot of money for his mother. The stories make the readers aware of the outcomes of strong motivation and how it can bring success. ‘