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. The most feared and respected who controls everything in the underworld is Don Vito Corleone, the Godfather. Although with his strong character and rationality, toughness and ingenuity, the Godfather is much more vulnerable to death than anyone. His vulnerability to death proves one order from the Tatagllias for his shooting. However moves quickly out of the way when death comes near him, wounded badly in hospital bed.
It begins when a representative of the Tatagllias named Sollozzo comes to the Don to ask favor about drug business. The Don refuses the
proposition. The eldest son Sonny, however, doesn't share the same opinion as the Don's, makes himself an error of judgment. Even though Sollozzo takes the Don's refusal as personal, the real reason of the shooting is purely business; knowing Sonny's enthusiasm about the proposition, apparently would replace the Don as his successor. There are 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 gets into the picture. It is Michael's killing of Sollozzo and Captain Mculskey that brought the Five Families in New York into war, puts Michael into exile in Sicily, and ends Sonny being brutally killed.
When the Don finally rises from bed, he comes back to take charge. However decides himself to retire after a peace meeting of the Five Families and other Mafia leaders in United States. The proposition for peace is 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've always believes in his youngest son, decides 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 stands against Michael Corleone when his father dies in a heart attack. An inevitable kind of life that runs in the blood of a true Sicilian, that makes him as the new Don, Don Michael Corleone.
As Mario Puzo's creation of the Godfather once said, “A man has only but one destiny.”