Paul and Trevor These Stories Tell Us Term Paper

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Paul and Trevor

These stories tell us that there are as many kinds of rebellions as there are rebels - in different strata of society and in different times. Some rebel against the external world, some, against the inner world, although all rebellion is inherently internal or inner.

Trevor seems to have become a rebel because of peer pressure, especially among the poor. Gangs form because there is nothing more gainful or meaningful to do, as in the case of Womrsley Common Gang of London. The young, especially, must acquire a sense of identity and belonging, no matter what identity or belonging it is. Trevor submits himself to the humiliation of initiation, especially because of his shy nature. He has relished the bright idea of burglarizing the rickety house of Old Misery and it becomes his passport to leadership in this thugs' association. Life is as simple but unsatisfying and dangerous to other youngsters living on the social and economic edge of society, like Trevor. Any kind of leadership is all that he comes after to crown him with any achievement and he gets crowned. When their burglary is discovered in the end, however, he loses that leadership again when he loses control over the gang.

Trevor and Paul are both young and are both unconscionable thieves. In Trevor, thievery is almost casual, although he does not resort to anything more criminal than that and vandalizing an already collapsing house. The merely internal destruction of Old Misery's house reflects the inner sense of destruction in these young people, who want to hide their criminality from the outside only. The Gang retains external cautiousness still by doing so. And Trevor's refusal to hurt Old Misery is likewise an expression of humaneness that is simply out to thrill itself at the expense of others in society.

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Greene writes about this kind of rebellion straightforwardly and even makes light of it in the end when the driver of Mr. Thomas laughs when nothing is left of Old Misery's house. It can be a way of saying that there is no security in weak houses like Old Misery's and that security should mean much more than that to him.

But Paul's rebellion is very inner, but which expresses itself in the outside world as signs and symbols grossly mis-interpreted. He is much more complicated than the roguish Trevor whose only aim is physical survival. Paul wants much more from life - even momentarily. He want to live enormously - so enormously that his physical structure breaks under it and he thinks that his mortal life is insufficient to contain his yearnings to live. Art is the nearest approximation of that yearning and that rage that ignores social rules. His outgrown clothes, frayed velvet, opal pin and red carnation on his buttonhole are outlandish expressions of his feeling of unfitness in a narrowly constricted society, especially that one he grew up in on Cordelia street. His defiant and contemptuous behavior gives that uneasiness away. These do not mean that he is gay or a weakling. It may be more of a distaste or a lack of appetite for formalities in society. His gestures - sarcastic smiles and statements, looking out the window un-attentively during class and aversion towards human touch - reveal his separateness from the tide of mankind.

Paul, though and unlike Trevor, still minds what others think of him, that is why, he hides behind symbols and fronts. He (Paul)….....

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