Family Theme Analysis

Family is essential in The Godfather, but it is also complicated. Puzo’s novel focuses on Don Corleone and his blood relatives, as well as the relatives and associates that make up the Corleone Family. It is impossible, however, for Don Vito (and later Michael Corleone) to maintain duel loyalties to both families because the two are interwoven. The crime Family is the blood family’s source of income, and as such, Don Vito much always prioritize the Family business even when doing so harms his blood family. In this respect, Puzo indicates that the two families’ fates are entwined. Sonny, Fredo, and Michael are also members of the Corleone crime Family. Other members of the Family include the Consigliere, Tom Hagen; the two caporegimes, Clemenza and Tessio; and the respective crews of mob soldiers that they lead. While the latter group of men are not Corleone blood relatives, they play integral roles as surrogate family members. The tragedies in Puzo’s novel, therefore, stem from Don Corleone’s inability to spare his domestic family from the negative ramifications associated with running a Mafia Family.

The Corleones believe that family is the most important of all social units. This suggests that they want to choose loyalty to blood family over loyalty to the crime Family. After Sollozzo attempts to kill the Don, Sonny emphasizes the paramount nature of family when he reminds Hagen of his adopted status in the Corleone clan. “Blood was blood and nothing else was its equal,” Puzo writes. Tom protests to Sonny that Don Corleone was a father figure to him, but because he is not a blood relation, the Consigliere is an outsider within the family. Michael’s military service also highlights the importance Don Corleone places on blood family. He “had no desire […] of letting his youngest son be killed in the service of a power foreign to himself.” The Don’s anger at Michael stems from his belief that a man should risk his life for family alone. Even when Michael’s battlefield heroics make the papers, the Don huffs, “he performs those miracles for strangers.” Strangers are not family, and loyalty to family is supreme. Despite his early patriotic feelings, Michael comes to accept the Don’s belief in the supremacy of family. “I believe in you and the family we may have,” he tells Kay, “I don’t trust society to protect us.” Michael’s eventual realization that family loyalty is a buffer against an uncaring outside world guides his approach to running his crime Family after the Don’s retirement.

Despite the Corleones’ emphasis on the importance of blood family, the lines that theoretically divide the Corleone domestic family from the crime Family are, in reality, hopelessly blurred. Because so many members of the Corleones are members of the Mafia Family, the violence that plagues the crime Family inevitably affects the blood family even when Don Vito tries to spare the latter from this violence. The instinct to protect his blood family informs Don Corleone’s refusal to join Sollozzo in drug trafficking. “All the members of my Family have lived well the last ten years, without danger, without harm,” he tells Sollozzo, “I can’t endanger them or their livelihoods out of greed.” Here, Corleone attempts to shield his blood family from any potential fallout associated with his Family business, even to the point of rejecting the potentially enormous profits the drug business offers. Unfortunately, for the Don, his two families are so interwoven that when Hagen tries to convince Sonny that Sollozzo’s attempted murder of Vito “was business, not personal,” the claim rings hollow. Don Corleone’s status as patriarch of both families makes it impossible to separate what is “business” and what is “personal.” Even when he rejects Sollozzo’s offer, this very rejection spurs Sollozzo’s attempt on the Don’s life so he can then negotiate a drug-trafficking partnership with Sonny. Sonny’s death at the hands of the Barzini Family is the logical result of conflating business with family: family members suffer the blowback that comes from criminal activity. The interconnected nature of blood and business implicates Don Vito’s family in the Family business whether he likes it or not.

Michael’s rise only further demonstrate the impossibility of choosing loyalty to blood family over loyalty to the crime Family. Michael recognizes that he cannot protect his family from his “work.” After Sollozzo’s attempted assassination of Don Vito, Michael tells Hagen that, “It’s all personal, every bit of business,” […] they call it business. OK. But it’s personal as hell.” Michael’s acknowledgment that an attack on his father is tantamount to an attack on the Family business attests to how the two families are interconnected. When Michael explains to Kay why he is joining the Family business, he seamlessly conflates his blood family with the crime Family. “Things went bad and I had to fight for my Family,” he states, “I had to fight because I love and admire my father.” Protecting his father by extension draws Michael deeper into crime. After Fredo sides with Moe Greene when he refuses to sell his casino to the Corleone Family, Michael warns his brother, “don’t ever take sides with anybody against the Family again.” Fredo’s potential betrayal of the crime Family threatens to sever his relationship with his brother. After he becomes the new Don, Michael wants for his own children the future that his father wanted for him: a life outside the Family business. “He would care for his children, his family, his world. But his children would grow in a different world,” Puzo writes. Michael knows that he cannot separate business from family, but he wishes that he could. This is the curse of being in a Mafia Family: it brings great power, but it makes impossible maintaining duel loyalties to business and family. While the blood family and the crime Family are technically distinct entities, the prominent role that family members play in both means that blood family will suffer the repercussions of being involved in the criminal lifestyle.