Effective characterization is absolutely central to a well-written and convincing story. The types of characterization that are most familiar to readers are those of direct and indirect characterization. Authors present their characters directly by telling us things about their characters, indirectly by showing us. Short story authors have direct and indirect characterization down to an art; Graham Greene effectively utilizes both types of characterization in his story “The Destructors”. However, sometimes the most obvious and well-developed trait of a story is not the most important. This is certainly true in “The Destructors”. It’s not Greene’s showing of his character’s nature that makes his story a classic, but rather his convincing the audience of their changes and transformations. A convincing change within a literary character has three integral parts: the change must be consistent with the character’s nature, it must be motivated by circumstance and there must be sufficient time within the story for the change to be believable. Blackie, a secondary character in Greene’s mid twentieth-century tale of post World War II London displays all of these elements of a convincing change within a character.