'The Godfather': A novel you can't refuse

(This Week’s Winner:Jenina Anne B. Gonzales, 27, is a marketing services manager at Ayala Life Assurance Inc. J. Anne’s interest in writing stemmed from her elementary and high school years at Poveda. She graduated with a Business Administration degree form UP Diliman in 2003 and is currently taking her MBA at De La Salle University.)

It’s distressing to find readers who equate good reads with fairy-tale romance and magical heroism. If they wanted themes that resounded of Herculean bravery and “they lived happily ever after” endings, then I’d suggest watching Snow White.

Sure, the quixotic variety may take us to a castle in the sky where we meet a gallant knight in full splendor, but what happens when the book is finished? We go our own way, living our lackluster and simplistic lives. There is no palace in the sky — why, we can’t even lift ourselves off the ground. There is especially no knight in shining armor, not even our friendly neighborhood MMDAs or mall-inspecting security guards come close to the literary definition.

Alas, while the book ends in magnificence, it leaves us readers in a vain pursuit of the nonexistent and with the implicitly shared thought: “Well, wasn’t that just a letdown?”

Strangely enough, my literary pursuits have been grounded in the mundane and the pragmatic; I’ve stuck to that which is closest to what reality permits. While I did dabble in a little Nancy Drew and Sweet Valley back in grade school, I purely ascribe this inclination to adolescence and the limitations of our library. Of course, what child wouldn’t dream of becoming a top sleuth with sidekick friends or being the smarter or the meaner twin? Ah, yes, my juvenile aspirations, and I’m not apologizing for them.

Another thing I won’t apologize for — the day I learned about Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather. Mario Puzo was perhaps already in gangster heaven when he popped into my consciousness. I was scrambling around my deceased grandfather’s study hoping to unearth a good book, the summer heat being too unbearable for any live person to wander anywhere without a roof above her head. The unrelenting search did work in my favor as it revealed an unusual find: Fools Die by Mario Puzo.

Curious about the lifestyle of the Las Vegas mob and Hollywood big shots — not that I aspired to be an actress or a croupier — I was quick to read the book, and having fancied the story halfway through I vowed to make The Godfather’s acquaintance thereafter.

And quite an acquaintance The Godfather, in the persons of Don Vito and his successor Michael Corleone, turned out to be. The capofamiglia (head of the family) — in his sordid endeavors to provide protection and justice to the oppressed — engaged in multitudinous acts of savagery and bloodshed, interspersed with a little old-fashioned garrote mutilation for that tinge of action. The capofamiglia was notorious for establishing his might and power in the most brutal way. No wonder the term cosa nostra (our thing), the much-used moniker for the Mafia, was precisely concocted for this way of life. The Don, his caporegime and soldato did their own thing, with no regard to any legal framework, and how they succeeded in this unceasing venture.

 While I may never meet a real life Godfather or be hired to perform a service as an act of friendship — as much as I would be willing to do so out of curiosity — I’d have to say the novel has modified my view of life. An ambiguous statement, I know, so let me expound on it further. As previously pondered, why dwell on the magical and the surreal, when there are much more compelling issues that affect us? Poverty, drugs, corruption, extortion and the like — certain literary genres dare not tackle these themes for they can only ruin a possibly blissful ending. People are easily captivated when they read stirring words such as “love,” “soul mate,” “dream” or “romance” at the back summaries of novels or pink-laden paperbacks. Unfortunately, this feeds our idealistic pursuits and veers us away from the hard-paced and stone-sour reality. It’s like the telenovela phenomenon is finally catching up to the literary realm.

Luckily, the Godfather, with his almighty penchant for slaughter, possesses the reasonable capacity to smack us readers back into reality, where we rightfully belong, by revealing to us the inner workings of a Mafia that similarly shares the groundwork of today’s graft and corruption. It is not by mere chance that every society maintains its resemblance to the cosa nostra. Mario Puzo has pictured the clear-cut society that ordinary fiction tries to mask with false reverie and rags-to-riches ambitions, but the fact of the matter is that we cannot escape our social and political landscape. We are members of a society ruled by social injustices, by corporate shams and political entanglements. While we are not governed by atrocities tantamount to the Godfather’s omnipotent hand, we all have become constituents of a comparably Mafiosi rule, whether we like it or not.

I admit that for a female my age, an inclination toward the romanticized literature is assumed and expected, and I always have dispelled that false notion. While indulging in such can be emotionally satisfying, too much can also blur one’s sense of logic and reason. In the novel, Don Vito scolds Santino for always acting out of rash emotion, which ultimately leads to his demise. In modern society, the best way to live and survive life’s misfortunes is to constantly follow the path of reason. I suppose many would doubt a female’s penchant for logic — having been christened by media as being predominantly right-brained — but it is essentially an attainable feat.

The Godfather is hardly my life story; rather, it is our collective experience. In a world flooded with corruption, political misgivings and economic despair, sometimes we just feel like garroting someone until we feel a sense of relief, or at least earn something from this uncanny deed. Others may turn to the local ‘hood or their padrino for support, while the rest of us can only fend for ourselves.

I may not have the power to “make you an offer you can’t refuse,” but I do have the power and strength to face the grimness of reality, and that in itself manifests everything that I need to survive in this world. Because without that, then I’m good as dead.