56 pages 1 hour read

Graham Greene

The Destructors

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1954

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Further Reading & Resources

Further Reading: Literature

Works by Graham Greene:

The Power and the Glory (1940)

The Heart of the Matter (1948)

The End of the Affair (1951)

Many of Greene’s novels explore Catholic themes, but these novels are among his most celebrated. All were adapted into films, and all are tragic.

Works by George Orwell:

Animal Farm (1945)

1984 (1949)

Like “The Destructors,” Animal Farm is an allegory, and 1984 is a dark vision of what fascistic governments could lead to. Both stories vibrate with postwar anxiety.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)

Also a satire, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 demonstrates the absurdity of war with great humor and irony.

Other Resources

Quartet for the End of Time by Olivier Messiaen (1942)

Messiaen wrote and debuted “Quartet for the End of Time” while still captive in a concentration camp. This rendition is performed by members of the New York Philharmonic for Carnegie Hall’s digital festival Voices of Hope, hosted in April 2021 to honor “musical works created in times of war, repression, and tyranny.”

“Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima” by Krzysztof Penderecki (1961)

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