Reviews tagging 'Grief'

One of the most powerful things about this novel, for me, is the way that the prose is so utilitarian (and oftentimes, even ugly), but the story itself is so beautiful complex. It's a really stark example of the age-old "show, don't tell" concept: things aren't told to you overtly, they're shown to you in the actions and inner worlds of each character and how they evolve over time.

There was a review of the book, years ago, that mentioned how a lot of men write books that are intended to be about the human condition, but end up just being about men, entirely by accident. The Godfather, by contrast, is a book that reads as intentionally, and brutally, about men, and masculinity, and the sort of violent hypermasculinity that simultaneously empowers men and destroys them.

The Godfather presents a world in which a marginalized community is pushed to the outskirts of society, exploited and degraded by those with more social power than themselves, and the things they do in order to gain some power of their own. Denied dignity, denied justice — and, most importantly to the story, denied their masculinity — the characters of The Godfather do whatever it takes to build and demand the masculinity and dignity and social power they're denied — often with bloody, ruthless results.

This is a very violent, very ugly story, but it's also, undeniably, a very tragic one — anyone who treats this story like a power fantasy is missing the point. Michael's "rise" as the Don of the Corleone crime family is also his descent.

When we first meet him, Michael is a kind, seemingly gentle man, with a loving, respectful relationship with his soon-to-be wife (although he possesses no social power, and is often regarded as emasculate by his family). As Michael wades deeper and deeper into the "family business," however, and becomes more and more aware of his Sicilian heritage and all the violent, bloody baggage that comes with it, we see him slowly garner more and more power in the underworld, all while becoming a more violent and brutal version of himself in an attempt to garner legitimacy as his father's successor.

It's devastating, and while we, as readers, revel in the triumph of Michael's intricately plotted ascension, we're also constantly reminded of the misery and violence it brings. Every moment of pain and loss in the book is brought on by someone's grab for power, and this is driven home again and again.

While I felt like some of the themes could have been handled better, particularly involving the women in the story, The Godfather is ultimately a book that I find extremely powerful, if for nothing more than exhibiting the ways that lush, illustrious prose are not everything when it comes to telling a gut-wrenching story.

QUOTES:

“Tom, don’t let anybody kid you. It’s all personal, every bit of business. Every piece of shit every man has to eat every day of his life is personal. They call it business. OK. But it’s personal as hell."

"Carlo had the sense to realize that Sonny would kill him, that Sonny was a man who could, with the naturalness of an animal, kill another man, while he himself would have to call up all his courage, all his will, to commit murder. It never occurred to Carlo that, because of this, he was a better man than Sonny Corleone, if such terms could be used; instead, he envied Sonny his awesome savagery."

"He doesn’t accept the rules of the society we live in because those rules would have condemned him to a life not suitable to a man like himself, a man of extraordinary force and character... He refuses to live by rules set up by others, rules which condemn him to a defeated life.... But his ultimate aim is to enter that society with a certain power, since society doesn’t really protect its members who do not have their own individual power."

"I know Michael can’t, but you’re not Sicilian: you can tell a woman the truth, you can treat her like an equal, a fellow human being.”

"She emptied her mind of all thought of herself, of her children, of all anger, of all rebellion, of all questions. Then, with a profound and deeply willed desire to believe, to be heard, as she had done every day since the murder of Carlo Rizzi, she said the necessary prayers for the soul of Michael Corleone."

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body shaming, Child abuse, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Homophobia, Infidelity, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Abortion, Suicide attempt, and Murder

Minor: Racial slurs, Racism, and Xenophobia

A lot of the more overt misogyny is something that's directly and thematically relevant to the book, as one of the book's major themes is the relationship between power, violence, and masculinity. For that reason, some of the more jarring examples of misogyny in the book, for me, read as intentionally jarring and serve the purpose of illustrating the domineering oppression of the strict, violent masculinity that permeates the Corleone's world.

(I think Lucy Mancini's storyline served to illustrate this really well, and so did Kay's, although I wish some more agency had been afforded to Appolonia and the "thunderbolt" storyline in Sicily.)

What was more jarring for me, on the sexism front, was the way that sex is written in the book (some of which read as intentional, and some of which just read as sexist), and also the way that Constanzia Corleone's domestic abuse is handled. I would've liked to see Connie's storyline, in particular, fleshed out a lot more. I understand what it was trying to do, but I don't like the way it was handled.

Additionally, there were two instances of pretty stark anti-black racism portrayed in the novel, as well as two or three instances of violent anti-Irish sentiment (including one of the most harrowing portrayals of violence in the novel). Both served a narrative purpose, I think, in illustrating the ways that the Sicilian mafia in America was negotiating their own power in negative relationship to other marginalized groups that they saw as competitors, but they're something to be aware of, along with the novel's handling of misogyny.

More...