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Law 11
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The 48 Laws of Power, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Power, Morality, and Pragmatism
Emotion vs. Action
The Pitfalls of Greed
History and Human Nature
Summary
Analysis
Using selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim. Pretending to be sincere can help you catch even the wariest person off-guard. The con artist Victor Lustig famously tricked Al Capone once by borrowing $50,000 and promising to double it. He later surprised Capone by returning the $50,000 and admitting that his business venture hadn’t worked out. Capone showed mercy, even letting him keep $5,000 as a gift for his honest dealing. In fact, however, Lustig had wanted to get the $5,000 all along.
Greene’s use of the word “victim” demonstrates the ruthless attitude of his laws. His rules divide people into winners and losers, providing advice on how not to end up as the victim. In this story, Greene shows how even someone as powerful as Al Capone could end up in a victim role. This demonstrates the need to be vigilant and to be suspicious of the intentions of others.
Active
Themes
Honesty can be a distraction that creates room for deception. Even skeptics will often accept a gift from an enemy that seems sincere. Odysseus and the Trojan Horse, from the Trojan War, is of course the most famous example of a gift that was a strategic deception. Still, Greene warns that this law may not apply to people who already have a reputation of trickery, where no amount of sincerity may come across as believable—in this case, it might make sense to embrace a reputation for dishonesty, which can come across as its own form of honesty.
Active
Themes
