Word: lefrance
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Since Snowball and Green Eyes are under lock and key, it cannot be physical, but spiritual authority that they wield. This spiritual authority stems from their criminality: Green Eyes' cellmate Lefranc, trying to build up Snowball at the expense of Green Eyes, caps his description of Snowball with "... his crimes! Compared to them, those of Green Eyes..." And Green Eyes, unready yet to concede the supremacy of Snowball, answers, "I don't know anything about his crimes...
...most striking effect and evidence of Green Eyes' authority, and its source in criminality, is Lefranc's attempt to equal or supplant him by matching his crime. "You ... you're beginning to be radiant," says Lefranc. "I wanted to take your place ... your luminous place..." The climactic action of the play is Lefranc's attempt to become what Green Eyes is by murdering the third cellmate Maurice...
...though he executes his murder dexterously, Lefranc fails as he had to fail. He has not realized the significance of the word that Green Eyes uses for the source of his power: "misfortune." "Do you know what misfortune is?" says Green Eyes...
...stronger than you. My misfortune comes from something deeper. It comes from myself," Lefranc retorts. But it is the last in a long series of his empty boasts. In the words of Maurice just before he is killed, "... Green Eyes is the one who's got to suffer... The one who's been chosen." Lefranc cannot choose himself. Deathwatch is a criminal scripture, preaching damnanation not by bad works but by Divine (or Satanic) Election...
...wrong? When you looked at me, it was just to find out how our bodies fit together." Maurice has said earlier to Green Eyes, "Just seeing her through you drives me almost nuts," and Green Eyes has answered, "I make a nice couple, eh?" Still earlier, Lefranc says sneeringly to Maurice of Green Eyes, "...I didn't talk about him as if he were a young bridge." It appears, then, that Green Eyes, though it is frequently said that he is "the man," somehow also is the woman--the woman whom Maurice, while vowing loyalty to Green Eyes...