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Chapter 24
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
Kay Adams has finished college and now works as a grade-school teacher in New Hampshire. For six months after Michael vanished, she calls his mother to inquire about him, but stops calling after doing so proves futile. She lives alone for two years but becomes lonely. She visits New York City to see some college friends, and there, she stays in a hotel room that reminds her of her time with Michael. She decides to call Long Beach for the first time in ages.
Both Michael and Kay have moved on in the years since Michael “made his bones” by killing McCluskey and Sollozzo. While Michael is away, Kay lives a life of relative independence by working as a teacher. She also divorces her thoughts from Michael’s memory before finally deciding to call him again. This decision to reconnect with him will draw her back into the Corleone Family’s web of crime.
Themes
Kay speaks to Mama Corleone, who informs her that Michael has been home for six months. Kay is shocked. “You wanta see Mikey, you come out here now. Give him a nice surprise,” Mama Corleone says. Kay refuses, thinking Michael would have called if he wanted to see her, but Mama Corleone tells Kay to come visit her. Kay arrives in Long Beach by taxi, where Michael’s mother greets her at the door. She tells her to surprise Michael when he arrives soon.
Despite repeatedly urging Kay to forget about Michael in the past, Mama Corleone is the one who begins the process of drawing Kay back into Michael’s world. In doing so, she is fulfilling the role expected of women in Mafia families: she is keeping her family together at all costs.
Themes
When Michael arrives, Kay notices the “broken half of his face” before she uncontrollably jumps into his arms. Michael takes the crying Kay to his car and they drive off. “I couldn’t write you or anything,” Michael tells her. “You have to understand that before anything else.” Kay asks if the police apprehended the man who killed Sollozzo and McCluskey, and Michael says that it was reported in the papers. He denies that he was involved in the murders. Eventually, they arrive at Michael’s brownstone house and make love.
Although he often lies to Kay, Michael is nonetheless upfront about the sacrifices Kay must make if she wants to be with him. He makes clear that his Family is more important than anything else is—so important, in fact, that it prevented him from ever contacting her during his exile in Sicily. In addition, the fact that he explains this matter to Kay while in a car suggests another impeding death. This time, however, the death is metaphorical: by getting back together with Michael, who is now deeply enmeshed in the Mafia and its patriarchal culture, Kay will symbolically kill her independence and acquiesce to Michael being her new “owner.”
Themes
Kay tells Michael that she never really believed that he killed those men. “It doesn’t matter whether I did or not,” he responds, “you have to understand that.” Kay is taken aback by the coldness in his voice. Michael asks if their potential marriage hinges on the truth about the murders, and Kay responds by telling him that she loves him, and that is all that should matter.
Michael’s cold response to Kay’s question about the murders suggests that he does not care whether she is outraged over his participation in such an act. For her part, by telling Michael that she would still love him even if he were a murderer, Kay is already playing the role of the dutiful Mafia wife who ignores her husband’s “business” and shows him unconditional loyalty.
Themes
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They make love again, and afterwards, Michael again asks Kay about marriage. “I’m working for my father now,” he says, “I won’t be telling you anything about my business. You’ll be my wife but you won’t be my partner in life, as I think they say.” Kay believes that Michael has now become a gangster, but he assures her that he cares for her and that “if everything goes right, the Corleone Family will be completely legitimate in about five years.” He adds that Kay may become a widow in the process.
Michael once again reveals his possessiveness towards women by denying that Kay could ever be his “partner”—a sharp contrast from their equal relationship at the beginning of the novel, before Michael became ensnared in the Mafia’s grasp. Against her better judgement, Kay does not let Michael’s transformation into a gangster alter her plans to be with him. Moreover, Michael’s insistence that the Corleone Family’s “business” will eventually become legitimate echoes Don Corleone’s own conflicted dream of joining the world of the very pezzonovante that he claims to despise.
Themes
Kay continues to press Michael on why he will not say that he loves her, and why she would be kept in the dark about his business were they to marry. He makes one “final explanation” about his family to her. He insists that Don Corleone is a businessman trying to provide for his family, but he “doesn’t accept the rules of the society” because they are ill-suited to a man of his greatness. Kay asks Michael if he believes that. “I believe in you and the family we may have. I don’t trust society to protect us,” he answers.
This moment marks the final transformation in Michael’s thinking, from a man who once vowed not to follow his father into a life of crime into a man who now plans to succeed his father in that life. Like Don Corleone, Michael now embraces the belief that the powers that control legitimate society cannot be trusted to look after his own interests, because those powers are inherently self-interested. That Michael cannot see how his own self-interest actually threatens his family is among the novel’s most significant tragedies.
Themes
