Crime and Justice Theme Analysis

The Godfather tells the story of the Corleone Family, in which the primary protagonists are the leaders of a New York-based Mafia organization—first Don Vito Corleone and then his son, Michael Corleone. Perhaps it should be no surprise that in a novel in which the “bad guys” are the focus of the story that the concepts of crime and justice are, at their core, complicated.

The primary source of the complicated nature of crime and justice in the novel is the fact that, as the novel portrays it, there is no pure, simple justice available anywhere. The novel makes this point in its opening scene, when Amerigo Bonasera sits in court and is forced to watch as the two well-off boys who brutally beat his daughter are given only suspended sentences because of their father’s political connections. In fact, in every instance in which the novel portrays what are supposed to be sources of societal justice or even just esteemed industries, they are marked by a distinct lack of justice, merit, or anything redeeming. Lawyers and government officials are corrupt, either in the pocket of crime bosses or seeking to curry favor with even more powerful “legitimate” politicians. The police, underpaid and resentful of that fact, systematically overlook all instances of what they call “clean graft,” in which officers take bribes to look the other way regarding crimes such as gambling and prostitution. Powerful labor leaders take bribes to start strikes, while powerful media titans like Jack Woltz use their positions to follow through on petty grudges or to prey on the less powerful (which in Jack Woltz’s case, means young girls seeking film careers). The novel portrays a world in which there isn’t any justice anywhere, and there is corruption everywhere, just visible behind the veneer of legitimate society. It is in this environment—an environment that causes people like Amerigo Bonasero who “once trusted law and order” to justifiably lose their faith in society—in which crime Families such as the Corleone’s rise and thrive. As Bonasero himself says after the trial lets off the two boys who beat his daughter: “for justice we must go on our knees to Don Corleone.”

The critical point here is that the Corleone Family does dispense a sort of justice. Don Corleone responds to Bonasero’s crisis by sending out two soldiers to beat the boys who attacked Bonasero’s daughter. At another time, Don Corleone frees Johnny Fontane from a legitimately predatory contract by threatening to kill the man who tricked Johnny into signing it. And just when Don Corleone was beginning to form his crime Family, he helped the widow Signora Colombo who had been unfairly (though not illegally) evicted from her apartment by talking to her landlord—a talk that, despite being pleasant, scared the landlord into changing his decision. Put simply: the Don Corleone and the Corleone Family offer help and justice to those who can’t get either from mainstream society.

However, the justice that Corleone offers is not the same as the ideals of the justice available under the law. Where law-based justice is meant to be impartial and universal, applying to everyone, the justice Corleone dispenses is personal and contingent: it is offered only to those who pledge loyalty. When Bonasera does come to Don Corleone to get justice for his daughter, Corleone says about Bonasera’s original choice to seek justice through the courts: “You spurned my friendship. You feared to be in my debt.” Once Bonasera swears loyalty, though, Corleone assures him that “you shall have your justice.” Whereas justice under the law is meant for the betterment of society and as end unto itself, Corleone’s justice is always an exchange, always offered as a favor with an understanding that the favor will be repaid. And, in addition, because the Mafia metes out justice by committing crimes, those who seek out Mafia justice by extension become participants in crime. Those who benefit from Don Corleone’s justice therefore become enmeshed in the Corleone family in two ways: first, because they personally owe Don Corleone for his help; second, because in getting Don Corleone’s help they have become connected to illegal activities that could get them into trouble with the law, and so they are reliant on Don Corleone’s protection from those potential consequences. The Godfather ultimately suggests that although the Corleone Family commits crimes in the service of “justice,” this justice is a tool rather than an end: it is meant to bind people to the Family so that the Family can more easily engage in criminal profit-making, which is the true goal of the Mafia.

And yet there is an additional tension that the novel explores but doesn’t ever entirely resolve. At one point in the novel, Don Corleone says to his fellow mob bosses about the powerbrokers of “legitimate” society: “Who is to say we should obey the laws they make for their own interest and to our hurt?” Corleone and the other mob bosses seem to legitimately believe that all of society is a kind of Mafia, that society is a rigged system set up only to protect and enrich those who are powerful, and that the laws and legitimacy of that society are just fronts designed to make the rigged game less visible and harder to upset. What’s a bit less clear is whether the novel agrees with the crime bosses. The fact that there are essentially no examples of pure or selfless justice occurring in the book, and that every character, ranging from judges to Hollywood moguls, seem to be corrupt and interested only in their own wealth and luxury, does seem to support the crime bosses’ point of view. At the same time, it’s possible to argue that the book shows how the Mafia works to corrupt public institutions—it bribes judges, the police, forces media moguls to pay “protection” against trumped-up labor strikes—such that more idealistic versions of justice become increasingly scarce, which in turn only strengthens the Mafia as their own brand of transactional justice becomes the only readily available justice around.