The Godfather

Content Warning: This novel and review contain references to graphic violence and sexism.

In 1969, Mario Puzo published The Godfather, an overnight sensation that introduced readers to Don Vito Corleone, head of a vast organized crime family based in New York. Of course, Don Corleone would be nothing without his family, and this is where the real heart of the novel lies. The Godfather owes its enduring popularity to its exploration of the complex Corleone family dynamic and its nuanced development of Michael Corleone, the Godfather’s heir apparent. His struggle to escape and ultimately accept his role in the family business has captured the attention of readers for generations.

When Michael Corleone returns home from World War II, he is immediately drawn back into family drama. He and his fiancé, Kay, attend his sister Connie’s wedding at the Corleone family home on Long Island. While there, Kay comes to understand that the family business is organized crime. While Michael’s brothers are involved in the family business, Michael has gone a different way: He defied his father’s attempts to keep him out of the war and enlisted. On his return, he went to college and met Kay, who isn’t Sicilian—or even Italian. This alone makes her unsuitable for marriage, at least in Michael’s mother’s mind.

Despite Michael’s attempts to distance himself from his family, he is more like his father, Don Vito Corleone, than he’d like to admit, as they are closer in temperament and intelligence than either of his brothers. When Michael’s father is shot by the rival Sollozzo family, the family business is thrown into chaos while he recuperates. Michael’s brother Sonny takes temporary charge of the family, and he and Michael hatch a plot to kill the head of the Sollozzo family and the corrupt police officer on their payroll.

Because Michael hasn’t been involved in the family business, he is the only person who can get close enough to carry out the assassination. He agrees to do so and kills the two men. In the aftermath, he escapes to Sicily, leaving Kay behind. Despite his best intentions, Michael is now thoroughly entangled in the Corleone family business, and the rest of the novel tracks his rise to assume Don Corleone’s leadership role and become the Godfather.

While Michael’s predicament is particular to his time and place—part of the complex web of relationships in New York organized crime of the 1940s and ’50s—his struggles with identity and family are universal. The strongest parts of the book are those that focus on Michael’s slow evolution into the next head of the Corleone family. From the opening scenes, Puzo focuses on Michael’s place within the family and his changing feelings about becoming a part of the Corleone organization. Significantly, his eventual participation in the assassination of Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey is for deeply personal reasons: Michael’s realization that without his father, the family isn’t capable of taking care of itself. However, the repercussions affect the entire organized crime system in New York, kicking off what becomes known as the Five Families War.

When Michael flees to Sicily, the novel takes a step back from the action. The story diverges into a side plot involving Johnny Fontane, a singer the Don is helping, and an extended flashback into the Don’s past as a young immigrant in New York City. While these chapters illustrate the extent of the Don’s power and its origins, the forward momentum and tension of the present-day plot are suspended, and the narrative lags. Johnny Fontane’s dissolute lifestyle, partially due to the success the Don has ensured, shows the downside of not earning your way. However, this section at times feels like another novel entirely.

Nonetheless, readers who are in it for the crime thriller aspects of the novel have plenty to work with when the main story picks up again. Michael’s brother Sonny, who was next in line to run the family, is assassinated, and the Don subsequently calls for peace between the families. Puzo goes into detail about the deep strategy, manipulation, and machinations the families engage in, reestablishing the gangster and crime genre aspects of the novel. A long and complicated cast of characters can be a lot to manage as Puzo moves them around like pieces on a chess board, but the back-and-forth style of the game keeps the plot interesting. Even more interesting is the fact that later, Puzo reveals that more was happening behind the scenes, creating a powerful and satisfying plot twist at the end.

When Michael finally does return from Sicily, he has changed. He has been immersed in Sicilian culture, particularly in the Mafia, as he was staying with a local Mafia chief. He also fell in love with and married Apollonia, who was then killed in a car bombing meant for him. With another act of violence against someone he loves, Michael takes another step down the road to becoming the Don. After Apollonia’s death, he fully commits to the family and returns to New York.

Apollonia’s death and Michael’s abandonment of Kay raise the issue of the role of women in The Godfather, which is negligible. Organized crime, as presented in the novel, is a hyper-masculine world, and its laws and culture are both determined and enforced by men. Readers who are looking for complex, well-rounded portraits of women should look elsewhere—in The Godfather, they tend to either serve as a motive for action, like Apollonia, or as a dutiful mistress or wife who asks no questions, like Vito’s wife Carmella, who quietly runs the Don’s family and household.

This is further illustrated when Michael quickly marries Kay upon his return to New York. He outlines the rules of their relationship before they wed, making sure Kay knows that they will never be partners—that their lives must remain separate, to some degree. This mentality is present throughout the novel, as even in Chapter 9, Michael is “surprised to find himself so secretive with Kay. He loved her, he trusted her, but he would never tell her anything about his father or the Family. She was an outsider” (154). Now, they mutually agree that this degree of separation must continue throughout their marriage. Kay accepts the deal, and together, they move into the Corleone family compound on Long Island, where Michael’s integration into the family is fully realized.