However being trivial to him, and taking it so serious leaves us with a smile on our face.
On the contrary "The Destructors" is a shocking story, as a group of youngsters make the transition from innocence to experience of their own free will. They move from a relatively innocent delinquency of snatching free rides on buses to the senseless destruction of an old man's house. The way they go about in pulling down the house is extremely shocking, especially since they have no real reason for .
doing so. Their apparently fantastic plan is to eat away at the house "like worms". They begin by destroying everything inside- opening the pillows and mattresses and tearing up all the paper they can find- as if this were an essential first step to the destruction of the house itself. They can work on the actual structures, sawing through joists and digging out the masonry between the bricks. Before they finish old misery maices a surprise return and they manhandle him in the outside lavatory, where they lock him up overnight to complete lavatory, where they lock him up overnight to complete their work. They cut trough the wooden struts on the outside of the house and then attack one end of the rope to the house and the other to a lorry parked in the car-park. In the morning, when the lorry moves off, it pulls the house down.
The one point in this story that leaves the reader utterly shocked is the fact that there is no recognizable motive for the boy's destructiveness. Blackie, the deposed leader, thinks that T's plans must originate in a deep hatred of the old man: "off course I don't hate him", T said, " there"d be no fun if I hated him". The violence is instinctive, and they don't meet any remorse for what they have done. By the end the reader is so shocked that he tends to keep on asking himself questions such as " how could a group of youngsters get up to something of the sort? " and " Why did they do it if they had no motive for it? ".