law of power

Appearing better than other is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to have no faults or weaknesses. Envy creates silent enemies. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to deflects envy and appear more human and approachable. only gods and the dead can seem perfect with impunity

Breaking of the law

Joe Orton met Kenneth Halliwell at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, London, In 1953, Where both had enrolled as acting students. They soon became lovers and moved in together. Halliwell, twenty-five at the time, was seven years older than Orton, and after graduating, having settled down together in a dark London apartment, They decided to give up acting and collaborate as writer instead. Halliwell's inheritance was enough to keep them from having to find work for a few years, and in the beginning, he was also the driving force behind the stories and novels they wrote; he would dictate to Orton, who would type the manuscripts, occasionally interjecting his own lines and ideas. Their first efforts attracted some interest from literary agents, but it sputtered. The promise they had shown was leading nowhere.

Eventually the inheritance money ran out, and the pair had to look for work. Their collaborations were less enthusiastic and less frequent. The future looked bleak.

In 1957 Orton began to write on his own, but it wasn't until five years later, when the lovers were jailed for six months for defacing dozens of library books, that he began to find his voice (perhaps not by chance: This was the first time he and Halliwell had been separated in nine years). He came out of prison determined to express his contempt for English society in the form of theatrical farces. He and Halliwell moved back in together, but now the roles were reversed: Orton did the writing while Halliwell put in comments and ideas.

In 1964 Joe Orton completed his first full-length play, Entertaining Mr. Sloane. The play made it to London's West End, where it received brilliant reviews: A great new writer had emerged from nowhere. Now success fol- lowed success, at a dizzying pace. In 1966 Orton had a hit with his play Loot, and his popularity soared. Soon commissions came in from all sides, including from the Beatles, who paid Orton handsomely to write them a film script.

Everything was pointing upwards, everything except Orton's relation ship with Kenneth Halliwell. The pair still lived together, but as Orton grew successful, Halliwell began to deteriorate. Watching his lover become the center of attention, he suffered the humiliation of becoming a kind of personal assistant to the playwright, his role in what had once been a collaboration growing smaller and smaller. In the 1950s he had supported Orton with his inheritance; now Orton supported him. At a party or among friends, people would naturally gravitate towards Orton-he was charming, and his mood was almost always buoyant. Unlike the handsome Orton, Halliwell was bald and awkward; his defensiveness made people want to avoid him.

With Orton's success the couple's problems only worsened. Halliwell's moods made their life together impossible. Orton claimed to want to leave him, and had numerous affairs, but would always end up returning to his old friend and lover. He tried to help Halliwell launch a career as an artist, even arranging for a gallery to show his work, but the show was a flop, and this only heightened Halliwell's sense of inferiority. In May of 1967, the pair went on a brief holiday together in Tangier, Morocco. During the trip, Orton wrote in his diary, "We sat talking of how happy we felt. And how it couldn't, surely, last. We'd have to pay for it. Or we'd be struck down from afar by disaster because we were, perhaps, too happy. To be young, good- looking, healthy, famous, comparatively rich and happy is surely going against nature."

Halliwell outwardly seemed as happy as Orton. Inwardly, though, he was seething. And two months later, in the early morning of August 10, 1967, just days after helping Orton put the finishing touches to the wicked farce What the Butler Saw (undoubtedly his masterpiece), Kenneth Halliwell bludgeoned Joe Orton to death with repeated blows of a hammer to the head. He then took twenty-one sleeping pills and died himself, leaving be hind a note that read, "If you read Orton's diary all will be explained."

Interpretation

Kenneth Halliwell had tried to cast his deterioration as mental illness, but what Joe Orton's diaries revealed to him was the truth: It was envy, pure and simple, that lay at the heart of his sickness. The diaries, which Halliwell read on the sly, recounted the couple's days as equals and their struggle for recognition. After Orton found success, the diaries began to describe Halliwell's brooding, his rude comments at parties, his growing sense of inferiority. All of this Orton narrated with a distance that bordered on contempt.

The diaries made clear Halliwell's bitterness over Orton's success. Eventually the only thing that would have satisfied him would have been for Orton to have a failure of his own, an unsuccessful play perhaps, so that they could have commiserated in their failure, as they had done years be- fore. When the opposite happened-as Orton grew only more successful and popular Halliwell did the only thing that would make them equals again: He made them equals in death. With Orton's murder, he became almost as famous as his friend-posthumously.

Joe Orton only partly understood his lover's deterioration. His attempt to help Halliwell launch a career in art registered for what it was: charity and guilt. Orton basically had two possible solutions to the problem. He could have downplayed his own success, displaying some faults, deflecting Halliwell's envy; or, once he realized the nature of the problem, he could have fled as if Halliwell were a viper, as in fact he was-a viper of envy. Once envy eats away at someone, everything you do only makes it grow, and day by day it festers inside him. Eventually he will attack.

Only a minority can succeed at the game of life, and that minority inevitably arouses the envy of those around them. Once success happens your way, however, the people to fear the most are those in your own circle, the friends and acquaintances you have left behind. Feelings of inferiority gnaw at them; the thought of your success only heightens their feeling of stagnation. Envy, which the philosopher kierkegaard calls "unhappy admiration," takes hold . You may not see it but you will fill it someday-unless, that is, you learn strategies of deflection, little sacrifices to the gods of success. either dampen your brilliance occasionally, purposfully Revaling a defect, weakness, or anxiety, or attributing your success to luck; or simply find yourself new friends. Never Underestimate the power of envy.