Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Godfather, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Crime and Justice
Power
Masculinity and Patriarchy
Family
Loyalty and Betrayal
Summary
Analysis
Connie Corleone boards a plane to Las Vegas for a vacation while Carlo remains in New York per Michael’s request that he stay at Long Beach for a few days before joining his family in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, a man walks into a Buffalo, New York, pizza parlor and asks the parlor owner for a slice. “I hear you got a great tattoo on your chest,” the customer says. He then pulls out a gun and kills the pizza shop owner. “Fabrizzio, Michael Corleone sends you his regards,” the assassin says before fleeing the parlor.
Michael’s plan demonstrates just how much patience he has been willing to endure in order to destroy all of the threats to the Corleone Family’s power. Michael’s revenge against the traitorous Fabrizzio—long after Apollonia’s tragic death—shows the value in careful planning and execution, or, as Don Corleone would have put it, serving a dish after it has had plenty of time to cool down.
Themes
Rocco Lampone drives his car to a small hotel off the Jones Beach Causeway where Barzini’s and Tattaglia’s assassins murdered Sonny Corleone. He enters a hotel room to find a naked Phillip Tattaglia having sex with a prostitute, and fires four bullets into his stomach. Later, Lampone drives Al Neri to Rockefeller Center, where Neri approaches Don Barzini and his bodyguards en route to meet with Michael Corleone and shoots Barzini in the chest, killing him.
Michael executes his father’s plan that, true to the Don’s form, involved formal negotiation as a front for implicit violence. The late Don arranged the peace meeting with Tattaglia and Barzini knowing that the two Dons would not stop their attacks on the Corleone Family. Thus, Michael’s murder of Barzini and Tattaglia is the ultimate fulfillment of his father’s plan to use negotiation as his enemies’ last chance to surrender in order to avoid a killing blow. After Tattaglia and Barzini refused to surrender, Michael delivers the blow.
Themes
Tessio is waiting for Michael to arrive while sipping coffee in the Corleone family’s kitchen. He tells Hagen that he hopes Michael can secure “a good deal” at the meeting with Barzini. As Tessio and Hagen prepare to leave for the meeting, a group of bodyguards surround the caporegime and tell him that Michael will take a different car to the meeting. Tessio immediately understands that he is a dead man. “Tell Mike it was business, I always liked him,” he says to Hagen before asking for mercy “for old times’ sake.” Hagen refuses, and the bodyguards lead Tessio to a waiting car, where he will take his last ride.
Michael waits patiently for Tessio to put his traitorous plot into motion before marking him as a traitor. When Tom Hagen’s bodyguards surround Tessio, he echoes Tom’s earlier claim that “business” need not be personal, and that he intended no personal insult to Michael. Of course, the fact that Tessio planned to harm Michael in the most personal and extreme way possible—by killing him—reveals the absurd hollowness of this claim.
Themes
Carlo Rizzi sits nervously waiting in a house at the mall where he is to meet with Michael. He calls his mistress to tell her he is going to be late for their date that evening. Suddenly, Michael arrives. Rocco Lampone and Tom Hagen accompany him. “You have to answer for Santino,” Michael says, “you fingered Sonny for the Barzini people.” A terrified Carlo swears his innocence, but Michael cuts him off to tell him that Barzini and Tattaglia are dead. He tells Carlo not to be frightened. “Do you think I’d make my sister a widow?” he asks.
Michael purposefully sets up Carlo’s murder inside the confines of the Corleone Family home to reference Carlo’s earlier betrayal of not just the Corleone Family, but the Corleone blood family as well. Because Carlo’s betrayal resulted in Sonny’s death, Carlo will live his last minutes as man marked for death in the same domestic environment that his betrayal ruptured.
Themes
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When Michael asks which of the other Dons approached Carlo to betray Sonny, Carlos says it was Barzini. As punishment, Michael says he will send Carlo to Las Vegas and exile him from the Family Business. Michael, Hagen, and Lampone then lead Carlo to a car parked outside the home.
Michael coldly insists that he will only banish Carlo, not kill him. However, the mention of a car outside indicates that Michael is lying, and that Carlo’s death is immanent.
Themes
Carlo settles in the front seat and closes the door. In the back seat, Clemenza wraps a garrote around Carlo’s neck, and his body leaps “like a fish on a line.” His feet smash the windshield and he loses control of his bowels. After a few minutes, Carlo breathes his last breath. “The victory of the Corleone Family” is now complete.
Like the other Corleone Family traitors, Paulie Gatto and Sal Tessio, Carlo meets his end inside of a car, which becomes his coffin. Notably, while Carlo’s presence as Connie’s groom first introduces the Corleone Family at its peak strength, his exit from the scene secures the Family’s “victory” and its reclamation of the strength it steadily lost in the years after Carlo’s wedding to Connie.
Themes
To dispose of any remaining traitors, Clemenza and new caporegime, Lampone take control of the remaining Barzini rackets and murder those men still loyal to the murdered Don. Those Barzini and Tattaglia caporegimes who are not killed immediately switch their loyalties to the Corleone Family.
In true Corleone fashion, Michael accepts the loyalties of the soldiers he does not kill. Like his father before him, who earlier in life incorporated the remnants of Maranzano’s empire into his own Family, Michael strengthens the Family not just by killing, but also by forging connections.
Themes
Meanwhile, Connie returns to Long Beach from Las Vegas and angrily confronts Michael about Carlo’s death. “You lousy bastard,” she screams, “You killed my husband […] you blamed him about Sonny, you always did […] but you never thought about me.” When Kay tries to tell Connie that she does not know what she is saying, Connie responds, “you think you know your husband? Do you know how many men he had killed with my Carlo? Just read the papers.”
Connie’s rage over Carlo’s murder further exemplifies the diminished role women have in the Mafia’s operations. Connie’s input in the Family business is nonexistent to the point where the men around her can operate freely, even when their options bring horror into her own life.
Themes
A shocked Kay asks Michael if what Connie says is true. “Just believe me, this one time I’m letting you ask about my affairs, and I’m giving you an answer. It is not true,” Michael answers. Relieved, Kay goes into the kitchen to make drinks when she sees Clemenza, Neri, and Lampone enter Michael’s room with their bodyguards in tow. “Don Michael,” Clemenza says. Kay watches as Michael receives the men’s homage like the “Roman emperors of antiquity, who, by divine right, held the power of life and death over their fellow men.” She begins to cry.
This passage underscores the cruel patriarchy that is at the heart of the Mafia’s conception of male power. In order to take his formal place as the new Don of the Corleone Family, Michael must literally excise Kay from that part of his life. In this scene, Kay’s tears over her banishment only strengthen Michael’s status as a crime boss. To control his criminal empire, he must also control the women in his life.
Themes
