CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS
The analysis presented in this chapter focuses on the concept of loyalty in an Italian family and in the Organized Crime Mafia. Before the analysis on the
loyalty in the Corleones organized crime family, the social background of the Corleone Family is presented.
A. Social Background of the Corleone Family
To know the social background of a family is not easy because we have to know from what side we appraise them. Organized crime family is not like family
in general. To know the social background of Corleone Family, there are three things to discuss. The first one is the structure of the Corleone Family. This is the
introduction of The Godfather’s family. The second one is how they become a Mafia family. The last one is how they have social and political power.
1. The Structure of the Corleone Family
In Sociology, Horton and Hunt state that family is the basic social institution from which other institutions have grown as increasing cultural complexity made
the necessary. Therefore, family is very important in forming society in which it is the basic institution, which develops the society Horton and Hunt 216.
Biologically, the Corleone Family consists of one father, one mother and four children.
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Standing at the door with him were two of his three sons. The eldest, baptized Santino but called Sonny by everyone...The second son, Frederico,
called Fred or Fredo, was a child every Italian prayed to the saints for...The third son, Michael Corleone, did not stand with his father and his two
brothers but sat a table in the most secluded corner of the garden...Conny Corleone was a not quite pretty girl, thin and nervous and certain to become
shrewish later in life. Puzo 14-18. Don Vito Corleone is the head of the family and his wife’s name is
Carmella Corleone. Vito has four biological children; they are Santino Corleone, Frederico Corleone, Constanzia Corleone, and the youngest child Michael
Corleone. Actually there is another child but he is not in blood relationship with the family. He is Tom Hagen who is roughly the same age as Santino people call
him Sonny. Young Tom is brought home by Santino because Tom is an orphan who lives on the streets of New York. Tom has no place to go because he has no
parents. He is then taken in by the Corleones. He lives with the family until he gets married. The Corleones become a powerful family in the society because the
members, either blood relationship or not, are connected by strong love and respect to each other.
They are two kinds of family, nuclear and extended families Hurlock 365. The Corleone Family belongs to an extended family. According to Hawes,
extended family plays a major role in visions of ideal society. In nostalgic views of American life, the nuclear family may play the starring role, but the extended
family is omnipresent and provides by far the best character actors. The extended family may also include people who are not related by blood but who make an
important contribution to family life Hawes 324. In the novel, the Corleones always welcome everyone who proclaims their friendship to the family and then
they will be treated as the members of the Corleone Family. Grabianowski’s
Mafia: An Overview states that each individual member of the gang within the Mafia is known as a family. Not everyone within a family is actually related to
one and other, although it is common for relatives of mobsters to be inducted into the same family as their brothers or fathers. So, like Tom Hagen, any other
members of the Corleone Family are treated as their own blood brothers. The Corleone Family is an Italian family. Corleone itself actually is a name
of a small town in the province of Palermo in Sicily, Italy. The family is called the Corleone Family because young Vito Andolini, later called the godfather, is
assigned the Corleone surname while passing through emigration at Ellis Island in New York. Davies’ Italian Community states that to be a stranger in a foreign land
was a daunting experience - there was the necessity to earn a living, which was difficult enough, but there was also the barrier of language. Thus, the ties of
kinship and also of community and region became very important in immigrant communities across the country. Being shy and unable to speak English, Vito
Andolini is unable to respond when asked for his proper name. People call him Vito Corleone as a remembrance that he comes from Corleone town, Italy. Young
Vito Andolini comes to America at the age of twelve. In Italy, he has no future because some people want to kill him.
THE DON was a real man at the age of twelve. Short, dark, slender, living in the strange Moorish-looking village of Corleone in Sicily, he had been
born Vito Andolini, but when strange men came to kill the son of the man they had murdered, his mother sent the young boy to America to stay with
friends. And in the new land he changed his name to Corleone to preserve some tie with his native village. It was one of the few gestures of sentiment
he was ever to make Puzo 193.
The young Vito Andolini is sent to America because his mother wants to save him from the murderers of Vito’s father. Vito’s father is involved in a feud
with another villager who takes his case to the Mafia. The father refuses to be defeated and in a public quarrel and kills the local Mafia chief. A week later, he is
found dead and his body is torn apart by lead blasts. A month after the funeral Mafia gunmen came inquiring after the young
boy, Vito. They had decided that he was too close to manhood, that he might try to avenge the death of his father in the years to come. The twelve-
year-old Vito was hidden by relatives and shipped to America Puzo 193.
Vito Andolini inherits Italian descent, especially Sicilian. The proof can be found when Vito’s daughter, Constanzia, is on her wedding day. Many people
come to Don Vito Corleone to ask for his help and he cannot refuse because on such occasion, of especially the wedding party, he cannot refuse his friends’
request of help. This is such a culture matter that no Sicilian can refuse requests on their daughter’s wedding days. When Kay Adams, Michael Corleone’s
girlfriend, asks Michael why there are so many men coming to the Don’s office on this wedding day, he says that it is a Sicilian culture because his father cannot
refuse them. “Because they know that by tradition no Sicilian can refuse a request on his daughter’s wedding day. And no Sicilian ever lets a chance like that go by”
Puzo 25. Grabianowski’s The Structure of La Cosa Nostra states that there is one
other position within the family that is somewhat legendary – the consigliori. The consigliori
is not supposed to be part of the familys hierarchy. He is supposed to act as an advisor and make impartial decisions based on fairness rather than
personal feelings or vendettas. This position is meant to be elected by the members of the family, rather than appointed by the boss. In reality, consigliories
are sometimes appointed and are not always impartial. Tom Hagen is the consigliori
of the Corleone Family. He is not an Italian, but he has lived with The Don’s family since he is a kid. He becomes a consigliori because The Don really
trusts him, although he is not a Sicilian. It is such a tradition that to be a consigliori
of Mafia family, he has to be full-blooded Sicilian. The Don had broken a long-standing tradition. The Consigliori was always
a full-blooded Sicilian, and the fact that Hagen had been brought up as a member of the Don’s family made no difference to that tradition. It was a
question of blood. Only a Sicilian born to the ways of omerta, the law of silence, could be trusted in the key post of Consiglori Puzo 47.
It can be seen that it is not a matter of Sicilian blood for The Don. The most important thing is the loyalty he gets from this man.
Tom Hagen knows that his position is the family is very crucial. He is the counsellor of the Don, his right-hand man. He realizes that he is the only one who
can bring the Don crash down to destruction because he knows everything that the Don knows, nearly everything. But, he also knows that he will never betray the
Don because he knows the risks. But no Consigliori had ever betrayed a Don, not in the memory of any of the
powerful Sicilian families who had established themselves in America. There was no future in it. And every Consigliori knew that if he kept the
faith, he would become very rich, wield power and win respect Puzo 47.
Thus, Tom Hagen knows that every Sicilian Family has a real Sicilian consigliori except the Corleone Family although he knows for sure that Corleone Family is
from Sicily, the town of Mafia.
2. Becoming a Mafia Family
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