The Godfather is my most favorite novel of all time; written by Mario Puzo, an Italian-American, proved a masterfully created
art that made way to Hollywood success. This novel is a must-read to those who have watched the movie. It exposes the objective of the Mafia and how it originated. Its existence from World War II and The Great Depression up to the recovery of America and the time being the story is told. It reveals everything about the secret organization that will no longer be kept secret.
The story is set in New York, where the most powerful of the Italian Families lived, the Corleones, and the one most feared and respected who controlled everything in the underworld was Don Vito Corleone, the Godfather. Although with his strong character and rationality, toughness and ingenuity, the Godfather was much more vulnerable to death than anyone. His vulnerability to death proved one order from the Tatagllias for his shooting. However moved quickly out of the way when death came near him, wounded badly in hospital bed.
It began when a representative of the Tatagllias named Sollozzo came upon the Don to ask favor about drug
business. The Don refused the
proposition. The eldest son Sonny, however, didn't share the same opinion as the Don's, made himself an error of judgment. Even though Sollozzo took the Don's refusal as personal, the real reason of the shooting was purely business; knowing Sonny's enthusiasm about the proposition, apparently would replace the Don as his successor. There were no other ways for the Corleones but to accept the proposition. A tactical move by Sonny that will soon change their minds when the youngest brother Michael got into the picture. It was Michael's killing of Sollozzo and Captain Mculskey that brought the Five Families in New York into war, put Michael into exile in Sicily, and ended Sonny being brutally killed.
When the Don finally risen from bed, he came back to take charge. However decided himself to retire after a peace meeting of the Five Families and other Mafia leaders in United States. The proposition for peace was for the Don not a sign of weakness, as what most of the Families thought—without not having avenged the death of his eldest son—but merely a tactical strategy to bring his youngest son Michael safe back home from Sicily. The Don, who had always believed in his youngest son, decided to let him run the business, to be the man in charge, while The Don would always be around with him for advices. But fate itself stood against Michael Corleone when his father died in a heart attack. An inevitable kind of life that runs in the blood of a true Sicilian, that made him as the new Don, Don Michael.
As Mario Puzo's creation of the Godfather had once said, “A man has only but one destiny.”