How Faithful Was The Godfather Novel To Real Mafia History?

How faithful is ‘The Godfather’ to reality? It’s all about perception. Puzo’s novel was meant to be read as a story rather than history, thus a lot of crime history was condensed to a few families and was portrayed in a clear moral direction. Yes, the power struggles of the 1920s and ‘30s, the Commission etc. are all portrayed correctly in the novel. However, many of the characters are composites of people Puzo knew while others, like Hyman Roth and Johnny Fontaine, are creations to serve a point that Puzo was trying to make in the novel.

However, Puzo did amplify the mob’s rituals and codes in order to better render those as scenes. The reality is that organized crime was for the most part a highly disorganized, impractical and even chaotic set of crimes in order to make money. For those interested in fact vs. fiction of The Godfather I would recommend reading a number of contemporary books on the subject as well as many of the court records from cases involving members of various organized crime organizations. As with most fiction, reality seeps into the story and actually represents how that story affected how people perceived organized crime and its various practitioners.

One can easily trace much of the popular culture perception of the Mafia from ‘The Godfather’ novels by Mario Puzo. I read the book and then watched the film when I was a teenager, and from then on many of the lines and scenes have become part of our popular culture as if they were factual reporting. Puzo had taken names, characters and headlines from the newspaper – the Castellammarese War, the establishment of a national system of racketeering, The Commission – and reworked them to create a clever and entertaining family saga where the reader can easily understand the motives of the characters and see how honor functions as a code in scenes.

In reality, the life of a made man is far more mundane: spend years navigating the treacherous landscape of intra-factional politics, establishing and maintaining tenuous alliances between different ethnic groups, and—to a far greater extent—mill around dull, EXPENSIVE bureaucratic circles trading product for vast sums. While ‘The Godfather’ takes the dramatic high-road, following the clear motives of clearly-defined characters operating under a strict code of honor, the truth of organized crime is far more grey, far more tedious, and (ultimately) far more dull. A look at the culture and landscape of the time through documentaries and investigative books is far more fascinating, and—when paired with ‘The Godfather’—offers the best of both worlds: the stirring novel of a bygone era, and a far more accurate and fully realized view of the culture that produced it.

The Godfather reads like nonfiction. It’s almost like a history book. Even though it’s fiction, you read it like it’s fact. I just finished reading it on a weekend when it was raining outside the whole time and I was too engrossed to put it down. There are so many real-life mob figures in The Godfather, including Frank Costello, Lucky Luciano, and Vito Genovese, among others. The way he recounts the real-life Castellammarese War and the formation of the Mafia Commission is also fascinating.

But then again, there is a lot of drama in this novel. The rituals, the consigliere, the concept of family honor all have some basis in reality, but they are portrayed in a manner that best serves the plot, rather than reality. For example, the famous “offer he can’t refuse” scene would rarely if ever play out that way in real life. Also, the novel portrayal of law enforcement, corruption, and multi-ethnic organized crime in the U.S. is presented through the lens of an Italian-American family.

The Godfather novel does read nicely, as history, but beware of misusing this novel as your sole primary research source for, say, The Castellammarese War, the real characters of the “Corleone family” of mobsters, etc. (it is alright to use it in contrast to non-fictional research though — ie. The Valachi Papers, Selwyn Raab’s research, etc.).

I consider ‘The Godfather’ a historical novel. Despite drawing from real life and actual individuals, Puzo created a work of fiction within a real historical context, conveying his thoughts on the topics of family, power, and other elements of the Godfather’s life. Much of the organizational details such as the consigliere and the Commission are actual aspects of the Mafia yet in the novel these are altered to fit the writer’s goals for his story.

So while ‘The Godfather’ novel makes a wonderful introduction to the overall mood and structures of organized crime it is by no means a primary source. Histories, biographies, court records even books like ‘The Valachi Papers’ give far more accurate ‘facts’ of this infamous era. I love ‘The Godfather’ novel for its personal take on the time but I hunt down the gory and messy facts afterwards.