Godfather Prose That Cuts Like

Godfather Prose that cuts like a knife The superiority of the verbal over the visual in an ethical manner when portraying violence in Mario Puzo's the Godfather vs. Coppola's film One of the dangers of portraying violence on film is that almost anything that is put on the cinema screen takes on a kind of glamour.

Even the ugliness of the shoot-out in the Italian restaurant that changes the entire power constellation of New York's underground organization has a kind of beauty in Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather." The red of the blood of the slain men splatters upon the floors and tablecloths. The carefully arranged decor of the dining room cuts a sharp, elegant contrast against the darkness of the blood.

The environment still looks lavish and charming and the men who execute the killing have a kind of silent, deadly force that is intoxicating to the eye of the viewer. In contrast, the cool, blunt force of the Mario Puzo's prose in the original novel more effectively shows the consequences of living in a violent and lawless world. Mario Puzo places the Mafia's history and legacy in a historical context that takes away some of the glamour of its power.

The Mafia is not a silent, deadly, unstoppable force that suddenly and inexplicably rears its head in history. It is not just an exotic Italian import, like pasta and oranges, in contrast to the rather bland wholesomeness of Michael's traditional American fiancee.

In the film, the Mafia could be luring behind any corner, like a monster, which also makes it perversely attractive, like Dracula, while Puzo clearly situates the rules of the organization, how such apparently silent but deadly attacks can occur, and also shows how easily violence can become tolerable within a society, society, and an individual's psychology.

Prose also allows the reader to make verbal connections between the emphasis on blood, familial ties, and living one's life by shedding blood: "Blood was blood and nothing else was its equal," in the world of the Mafia (Puzo 99). "The bloody victory of the Corleone Family was not complete until a year of delicate political maneuvering established Michael Corleone as the most powerful Family chief in the United States" (440).

This shows how placing too much of an emphasis on blood ties in America, where merit rather than Old World laws should reign, results in bloodshed and the inability of an immigrant family to become fully integrated into the American melting pot. Thus violence and the act of dismemberment are present in almost every prose metaphor used in Puzo's text: "Even a Sicilian sentenced to twenty years might break the omerta and talk his brains out" (288).

The metaphor of 'talking his brains out' suggests that spilling words is just the same as spilling your brains, that talk is death. In both film and book, silence figures prominently in the Don's ability to exercise his power. For example, in the film, Don Corleone's raw, behind-the-scenes power is evident by his ability to secretly and stealthily kill movie executive's beloved racehorse, showing how "the Mafia cemented is power by originating the law of silence, the omerta" (327).

He has his followers, unbeknownst to the viewer as well as the studio head put the head of the horse in the man's bed while the man is sleeping. This image, more than the silence and stealth of the Don's power, lives on the viewer's mind, and takes away from the fact that this is not about cruelty to animals, but about different kinds of force -- the obvious financial power shown by the film industry, and the subtle, violent power of Don Corleone.

The studio head Woltz is arrogant in that he thinks because people can see his power and he is stands on the side of the law, he can do as he pleases. "There couldn't be any kind of world if people acted that way," he thinks if the Don can hold sway over his casting decision before finding the horse's head (69). "Six hundred thousand dollars" lie dead beside him, a considerable sum in that day and age (69).

The power of film is undercut by the superior power of violence, although ironically the viewer is watching a film, and is being taken into the foreign world of the Mafia through the medium that Woltz controls. To live by power outside the law flouts the American dream: "It meant you couldn't do what you wanted with your own money, with the companies you owned, the power you had to give orders. It was ten times worse than communism. It had to be smashed.

It must never be allowed," states Woltz explicitly, voicing his own thoughts and the reader's likely thoughts. (69) of course, the Don's ultimate aim in both the film and the book is that his flesh and 'blood' -- Michael -- will participate in legal, official society and wield power through the law and through money not through ill-gotten gains, even though eventually this power is shown to have less force than Don Corleone's primitive power if enforcement outside the law.

The coolness of Puzo's prose also indicates the mercilessness of the Mafia better than the more heated intensity and pacing Coppola film because, no matter how chillingly executed, even if the faces are not shown when blood is shed, the unemotional thoughts and feelings of the professional killers are hard to keep in mind, when as an audience member, a viewer is shocked by the sight of murder or dismemberment or takes perhaps a vicarious pleasure in watching such violence on film, from a safe distance like rubber-necking during a traffic accident.

In contrast, Puzo in his novel forces the reader to enter the mind of the killers, such as when they think: "a real Mafioso chief would have had the other two men killed also" (201). To think like a Mafia don is profoundly disturbing for the reader, but in a 'positive' sense, because it forces them to confront, on an intimate level, the horrors by which the Mafia runs its own network and laws. The viewer, in contrast, is more of a disinterested spectator.

Puzo also creates a sense of the climate of Sicily, not just in terms of the hotness and dryness of.