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Chapter 21
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Godfather, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Crime and Justice
Power
Masculinity and Patriarchy
Family
Loyalty and Betrayal
Summary
Analysis
Sonny Corleone’s death devastates Lucy Mancini. He was the only man who could ever bring her to sexual orgasm. Lucy now lives in Las Vegas, where she is relaxing at the Corleone Family’s hotel pool with the hotel’s resident physician, the slender, blond-haired Dr. Jules Segal. He is caressing her body as she remembers her long affair with Sonny. After Sonny’s death, she tried to overdose on sleeping pills. While recovering in the hospital, Tom Hagen arranged for her to move to Las Vegas, where the Corleone Family now provides her an annuity, per Sonny’s request before his death.
Lucy Mancini is the only woman in the novel who experiences redemption from her association with the Corleone Family. Unlike Kay Adams, Mama Corleone, and Connie Corleone, Lucy ends up leading a relatively independent life (albeit one that Corleone money supports) free from the personal dominance of Corleone men. Whereas Connie and Kay live to serve their respective husbands, Lucy meets Jules Segal, a man who is all too happy to serve her.
Themes
Now a resident of Las Vegas, Lucy has regained a sense of happiness and is dating Jules Segal, whom she met following a physical checkup in his hotel office. She is also an unofficial owner of five “points” in the hotel, making her a front that masks the Corleone Family’s ownership. She also agrees to look after Fredo Corleone, who, under the wings of casino magnate Moe Greene, has become a hopelessly reckless womanizer.
Here, Fredo cements his status as a failure among the Corleone men when Lucy Mancini becomes his unofficial guardian. In a Mafia culture that prizes machismo and male dominance of women, Fredo’s reckless behavior makes him appear weak and directionless. Despite his relentless womanizing, Fredo lacks self-control and therefore fails the Corleone leadership test.
Themes
Lucy’s romance with Dr. Jules Segal blooms quickly after her first visit to his office. His informal dress and casual manner of speech attracts her. “You don’t know how unorthodox I am. And I didn’t know how rich you were,” he tells her early in their courtship. They dated for several months but Lucy still will not yet have sex with him. Now, as they lie by the poolside, Jules convinces her to come to his room, where they finally make love.
Lucy and Jules’s romance is a reversal of the novel’s standard gender roles. While most of the men in the novel pursue women from a dominant role, Lucy holds much of the power in her courtship with Jules, who must repeatedly promise to treat her with respect in exchange for the opportunity to make love to her.
Themes
After they make love, Jules finally learns the secret of why Lucy had refused sex for so long; Lucy has a “pelvic malformation” that causes an enlarged vaginal opening and a subsequent difficulty achieving sexual climax. Jules assures her that a simple surgery can repair the malformation, which will make sex more pleasurable and prevent further health complications. “Think of it as a piece of elastic in your body that has lost its elasticity,” he tells her, “by cutting out a piece, you make it tighter, snappier.”
Not only does Lucy control the levers of power in her relationship with Jules, but Jules also offers to provide her with the means to enjoy sex permanently through surgery. Jules’s offer is at least partially self-serving (he wants to have sex with her more often, after all), but it also appears to be a genuine recognition that her needs matter in their relationship. Lucy is Jules’s partner, not his object, and she therefore has an equal stake in their relationship.
Themes
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Since Jules now knows Lucy’s secret, he tells her his own secret. Segal was once a gifted surgeon in New York who specialized in abortions until his superiors caught him performing the then-illegal procedure. His colleague, Dr. Kennedy (Don Corleone’s doctor), connected Segal with Tom Hagen, who got him a job in Las Vegas to escape the Eastern medical establishment’s blacklisting. At the hotel, Segal now performs abortions on cocktail waitresses whom Fredo Corleone recklessly impregnates.
Given the long shadow of crime that the Mafia casts, it is fitting that a blacklisted doctor who specializes in criminalized medical operations becomes a fixer of sorts for the Corleone Family. By cleaning up the “messes” that Fredo Corleone leaves in the casino hotel, Jules Segal becomes a tacit partner in the Family’s criminal operations.
Themes
Jules tells Lucy that a Los Angeles surgeon he knows can perform her surgery and she agrees to it. Two weeks later, Dr. Frederick Kellner successfully performs the operation on her. The next morning, Lucy awakens to find Fredo, Jules, Nino Valenti, and Johnny Fontane at her bedside. As she greets the men, Jules notices that Fontane has a strained throat. “Didn’t you get a doctor to look at it? Maybe it’s something that can be fixed,” Jules asks. His probing irritates Fontane, who lists all of the specialists who failed to cure his voice troubles.
In many ways, Jules Segal shares qualities with Don Corleone because he is a man who can fix problems that other men fail to fix. He is the only man to notice Lucy’s pelvic malformation, and he suspects that other doctors have failed to properly diagnose Johnny Fontane’s vocal cord ailments. Segal is one of the novel’s many powerful men, though he operates mostly in the legitimate world rather than in the world of crime.
Themes
Jules convinces Fontane to let him examine the singer’s throat. He concludes that Fontane has a growth on his vocal cords and insists that he can identify it in a few hours. An angry Fontane criticizes Jules for trying “to fuck around with my throat,” but Jules argues that Fontane’s career—and possibly his life if the growth is malignant—depends on further examination. With Nino’s support, Fontane grudgingly agrees. The examination reveals that Johnny has warts on his vocal cords, which a surgeon can easily remove.
Although he has been a powerful man for much of his professional life, Johnny Fontane is consistently beholden to the whims of more powerful men than he is. Whether it is Don Corleone, Jack Woltz, or Jules Segal, Johnny owes his career in large part to men who can handle problems that Fontane is unable to resolve on his own. As a character, Fontane embodies Puzo’s notion that true power lies behind the scenes, and that those who publicly display their power are often not nearly as powerful as the people who operate in the shadows.
Themes
Following the diagnosis of warts, Fontane defensively accuses Segal of threatening his singing career by proposing surgery. An angry Segal reminds Johnny that warts are far better than cancer and that he should be grateful for the favor. A drunk Nino thanks Segal for his help. Segal responds by warning Nino that he will die in five years if he keeps drinking so heavily. “Five years?” Nino responds, […] “is it going to take that long?”
Just as he lives in a state of denial over how his own shortcomings contributed to his failures with women, Fontane also lives in denial about who is truly responsible for his career success. That he takes a surgeon’s positive diagnosis and generous offer to help as a threat to his masculinity demonstrates how fragile that masculinity is to begin with.
Themes
A month has passed since Lucy’s operation, and she and Jules are celebrating by planning to make love for the first time since before she went under the knife. Jules presents her with an engagement ring. “That shows you how much confidence I have in my work,” he says. They make love multiple times.
The relationship between Jules and Lucy is the only male-female relationship in the novel that comes close to being an equal partnership. Although the couple certainly uses each other for their own personal fulfillments, they both hold power in the relationship, which cannot be said for the novel’s other male-female relationships.
Themes
