The Snowball Effect and the Beauty of Destruction

The Snowball Effect and the Beauty of Destruction

Written by: Clayton

In class this week, as one of our homework assignments required us to read a story called The Destructors written by Graham Greene. This short story involves a "gang", rather a group of like-minded, prepubescent boys after World War II. When reading through this story a so called "effect" or chain reaction was taking place in the plot. The gang started my planning on a seemingly innocent game of "stealing" bus rides, but eventually end up destroying a two century old house that survived the impalement of bombs from World War II. Between these two almost opposite spectrum actions a special type of reaction took place: The Snowball Effect.

The Snowball Effect, as explained in the best of my abilities, is a process that increases it's mass or 

importance at an almost exponential rate i.e The objects growth is exponentially proportionally to its speed. In other words, as it picks up speed, it grows at a ever increasing rate. This can be examined by how the gang can make such large jumps in activity. First it starts out as getting free bus rides, to demolishing a house from the inside thus passing the point of no return, to even locking the house owner in a "loo" or outhouse. This perfectly represents a chain  reaction because their innocence seems to be lost as it all rolls down the hill. As with most snowball effects the end result is almost always end with a path of self-destruction.

The beauty of destruction, can be seen in all of the universe, in every aspect. The most amazing part of destruction is that it involves creation. A fundamental law of the universe is that of the Laws of Conservation. This by far is one of the most important laws, and my personal favorite. As put in simple terms the Law of Conservation of Mass is that something cannot come from nothing. Everything that exists, has existed, and has yet to exist, is present at this moment in time; Stuck in a vicious cycle of destruction and reconstruction. In The Destuctors this law is present, even in this fictional story. When the gang destroys Mr. Thomas's house, something not physically created besides a pile of rubble, but a gang bonded by brotherhood and guilt. That is the underlying premise behind this book I have found after my second read-through. In essence destruction is an alternate form of creation, but from the opposite view point. Such as life only moves in one direction, but from a different perspective, it is yet plausible for life to go backwards. Always present and always taken for granted. The cycle of destruction and creation, life and death, and that is the beauty of the Law of Conservation.