The 48 Laws Of Power

Reorganize Greene’s 48 Laws of Power to determine and analyze his core beliefs. List each law by its primary category: money, power plays, deceit, and defeating enemies. Then sequence each category’s laws in order of importance. These questions might help to guide your analysis of the Laws and their efficacy.

• What is Greene’s justification for advocating for one’s own influence and power?
• According to Greene, how should an individual behave around authority figures?
• What are Greene’s tactics for subduing various enemies?
• How does Greene propose friendship should be used or discarded depending on the circumstances?
• In what way does Greene advise weaponizing positive attributes to obtain goals?
• How essential is planning in achieving power?
• What mannerisms and attitudes should be adopted to gain influence?
• What should an individual do to effect change?

Teaching Suggestion: Because the prompt requires students to analyze the text as a whole, it may be beneficial for students to work in groups to discuss the questions and organize Greene’s laws into categories. It may be helpful for students to create a written record of their discussion points as they work in the form of a chart; they can use the category headings to track arguments, opinions, and suggestions.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students who benefit from additional assistance with whole-text tasks might limit their analysis to 1-3 of the categories and use three buckets to rate importance of the selected Laws (Less Important, More Important, Most Important).