The Godfather and Sicily
157 pages
English

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157 pages
English

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Description

In this interdisciplinary work, Raymond Angelo Belliotti presents an interpretation of The Godfather as, among other things, a commentary on the transformation of personal identity within the Sicilian and Italian immigrant experience. The book explores both the novel and the film sequence in terms of an existential conflict between two sets of values that offer competing visions of the world: on the one hand, a nineteenth-century Sicilian perspective grounded in honor and the accumulation of power within a culturally specific family order; and on the other, a twentieth-century American perspective that celebrates individualism and commercial success. Analyzing concepts such as honor, power, will to power, respect, atonement, repentance, forgiveness, and a meaningful life, Belliotti applies these analyses to the cultural understandings transported to America by nineteenth-century Italian immigrants, casting fresh light on Old World allegiances to l'ordine della famiglia (the family order), la via vecchia (the old way), and the patriarchal ideal of uomo di pazienza (the man of patience), as well as the Sicilian code of honor. The two sets of values—Old World Sicilian and twentieth-century American—coalesce uneasily in the same cultural setting, and their conflict is irresolvable.
Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Passions and Limitations of Honor

2. The Sicilian Family Order

3. Power, Destiny, and Evil

4. Repentance, Atonement, and Redemption

Appendix A: Summarizing The Godfather

Appendix B: Summarizing The Godfather II

Appendix C: Summarizing The Godfather III

Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Sujets

Informations

Publié par
Date de parution 01 juillet 2021
Nombre de lectures 0
EAN13 9781438484327
Langue English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1598€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

The Godfather and Sicily
SUNY series in Italian/American Culture

Fred L. Gardaphé, editor
The Godfather and Sicily
POWER, HONOR, FAMILY, AND EVIL
RAYMOND ANGELO BELLIOTTI
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Belliotti, Raymond A., 1948– author.
Title: The Godfather and Sicily : power, honor, family, and evil / Raymond Angelo Belliotti.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2021. | Series: SUNY series in Italian/American culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020042935 | ISBN 9781438484310 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438484327 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Puzo, Mario, 1920–1999. Godfather. | Puzo, Mario, 1920–1999—Film adaptations. | Godfather films—History and criticism.
Classification: LCC PS3566.U9 G6293 2021 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042935
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Marcia, Vittoria, Angelo, and Alicia
Ha l’audacia di rischiare tutto? Per correre la possibilità di perdere tutto su una questione di principio, su una questione d’onore? È un siciliano?
(Does he have the audacity to risk everything? To run the chance of losing all on a matter of principle, on a matter of honor? Is he a Sicilian?)
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One The Passions and Limitations of Honor
Chapter Two The Sicilian Family Order
Chapter Three Power, Destiny, and Evil
Chapter Four Repentance, Atonement, and Redemption
Appendix A Summarizing The Godfather
Appendix B Summarizing The Godfather II
Appendix C Summarizing The Godfather III
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Preface
O n July 3, 2019, David Kyle Johnson, a scholar compiling an anthology on the topic of popular culture as philosophy, contacted me and solicited my participation, sweetening his invitation with a plum assignment: an essay on The Godfather . Kyle and I had never met or corresponded, but he was acting on a recommendation from a mutual colleague whom we both respected as distinguished and trustworthy, Bill Irwin. I accepted immediately, and Kyle designated December 15, 2019, as the deadline for me to submit my draft.
Bill suggested that Kyle assign me that topic undoubtedly because he knew I was an unapologetic Italian American flag-waver who would pounce at the chance to critically analyze the Corleone family and their Sicilian contemporaries. After all, these fictional icons immigrated to the United States at the same time as did my ancestors. Giuseppe Leonardo and Grazia Giordano Leonardo immigrated to this country from Valguarnera Caropepe, Sicily, in 1912. Angelo Belliotti, Gaetana Zaso Belliotti, and Rosario Belliotti arrived from Cerda, Sicily, in 1896. Rosario met and married Agnese (“Daisy”) Rizzo, an immigrant from Alia, Sicily, in the United States, and together they raised five children, one of whom was my father, Angelo Belliotti. Giuseppe and Grazia raised nine children, one of whom was my mother, Luisa Leonardo Belliotti. These are my immediate predecessors in the generational chain that stretches from Sicily to the United States of America. I owe them everything. I would be nothing but for their unwavering courage, familial pride, grueling labors, fierce determination, and inexhaustible love. I aspire only to emblazon my link in the chain as honorably as they did.
By analyzing the fictional late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Sicilian immigrants portrayed in The Godfather , I could re-examine the Italian ethos that animated the spirits of my immediate ancestors and that cast an indelible shadow on my own psychology. As Fred L. Gardaphé insightfully remarks, “ The Godfather has done more to create a national consciousness of the Italian American experience than any work of fiction or nonfiction published before or since. It certainly was the first novel that Italian Americans as a group reacted to, either positively or negatively, perhaps because it appeared at a time when Italian Americans were just beginning to emerge as an identifiable cultural and political entity.” 1
That the fictional Corleones were gangsters was relevant but not disqualifying. Only a miniscule number of Italian Americans were ever operatives within organized crime, and those who were constituted a small percentage of criminals in America. 2 The criminality of the Corleones was noteworthy but not essential to the wider matters of inquiry that I envisioned.
I aspired to examine The Godfather from a distinctive vantage point: as a fictional but well-researched narrative of the Italian American immigrant experience in America—as the struggle between nineteenth-century Sicilian cultural values and twentieth-century American individualism and industrialism. I composed my essay and delivered it to the editor on August 21, 2019. At that moment, I realized that my topics of choice merited and would reward a more thorough study. That realization is the genesis of this work.
Acknowledgments
N umerous people contributed to this work directly or indirectly. As always, my family comes first. Thanks to Marcia, Vittoria, Angelo, and Alicia for their ongoing support, enthusiasm, and love. My greatest accomplishment in life is to be a member of a family whose talents and virtues far exceed my own. But for Bill Irwin and Kyle Johnson I would not have undertaken this project. I am deeply grateful for their faith in this venture and for their encouragement. Thanks also to Alice Hodge, an expert of book formatting who corrected my numerous errors and prepared the final manuscript with peerless efficiency and grace. Additional thanks to James Peltz, SUNY Press Director, for shepherding the work through the peer review and editorial board approval processes under challenging circumstances; to the peer reviewers whose evaluations were insightful, edifying, and generous; to Jenn Bennett-Genthner, Production Editor, for taking the book but not its author seriously; to Anne “Maximum Alacrity” Valentine, Marketing Manager, for earning her new nickname; to Kate Seburyamo for assuming the final burden of marketing the work; to John Wentworth, Copyeditor, for bravely foraging through and improving my tortured prose; to Kirk Warren, for designing such a stylish cover; and to Sue Morreale for so efficiently and swiftly finalizing the work. Finally, I thank the following publishers for their permission to adapt or reprint short excerpts from my previously published work:
Seeking Identity: Individualism versus Community in an Ethnic Context . Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995.
Why Philosophy Matters: 20 Lessons on Living Large . Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2015.
Power: Oppression, Subservience, and Resistance . Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2016.
Nietzsche’s Will to Power: Eagles, Lions, and Serpents . Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2017.
Jesus the Radical: The Parables and Modern Morality . Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013.
Introduction
T his is an interdisciplinary work that philosophically analyzes concepts such as honor, power, will to power, respect, atonement, repentance, forgiveness, and leading a meaningful human life in service of a distinctive interpretation of The Godfather as a novel and film sequence. Applying these analyses to the cultural understandings transported to America by nineteenth-century Italian immigrants to America casts fresh light on old-world allegiance to l’ordine della famiglia (the family order), la via vecchia (the old way), and the patriarchal ideal of uomo di pazienza (the man of patience), as well as the Sicilian code of honor. As such, this work exercises philosophical examinations to inform historical, sociological, and psychological findings, as well as literary and cinematic explanations of the novel and film trilogy.
On this reading, the narrative spun in The Godfather is much more than a lurid metaphor for the excesses of American capitalism or the story of problematic monarchial succession or the tale of a troubled dynastic family struggling for survival. The Godfather describes the existential conflict between two sets of values partially constituting competing prescriptive and descriptive visions of the world: a nineteenth-century Sicilian perspective grounded in honor and the accumulation of power within a culturally specific family order, and a twentieth-century American perspective celebrating individualism and commercial success. The two sets of values coalesce uneasily in the same cultural setting, and their conflict is irresolvable. Ultimately, the Sicilian perspective must wither away in the United States because, unlike the old country, the new world lacks its sustaining cultural conditions. This reading interprets The Godfather as, among other things, a commentary on the transformation of personal identity within the Sicilian and Italian immigrant experience.
Chapter 1 concentrates on two pivotal scenes: Amerigo Bonasera’s solicitation of the intercession of Don Vito Corleone in punishing miscreants who brutally assaulted the undertaker’s daughter, and Tom Hagen’s discussions with film mogul Jack Woltz pursuant to securing a movie role for Don Vito’s godson, Johnny Fontane. The substance and aftermath of these encounters illuminate the nineteenth-century Sicilian values that Don Vito embodies. Most strikingly, they demonstrate Don Vito’s

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