Son of the Mob

Vince comes from a family of gangsters who still have their own idea of propriety and good behavior. Vince’s mother, for instance, is obsessed with regular family meals, even while she reveals herself, at the end of the novel, to be as powerful a Mafia boss as her husband. Vince’s father values hard work and motivation and worries that his son is lazy and aimless; regarding Tommy, Vince’s thuggish and impulsive older brother, Vince’s father tells Vince: “Your brother–sometimes I wonder if he’s got brains or coleslaw in there. But his heart–that’s pure gold” (62). (Here, he is speaking of Tommy’s attempt to set Vince up with a prostitute, as an apology for messing up his date with Angela O’ Bannon.) Underscoring all of these values is the paramount value of family loyalty, which is what makes Vince’s situation so complicated: he knows his family to be criminals, yet he would feel immoral in betraying them.

The straighter characters in Vince’s life, meanwhile, tend to moralize far less. Mr. Mullinicks, Vince’s New Media teacher, may have a respectable job, but he reveals himself to be apathetic and morally neutral in his attitude towards Vince’s class website project. He is unconcerned that Vince might be inadvertently running a criminal racket on his website and tells Vince that all that matters on the internet is “traffic”; tellingly, his signature phrase is, “That’s your problem” (39). Kendra, Vince’s girlfriend, leads a seemingly wholesome and exemplary life–working at a day care center in her spare time and taking life-saving courses at the YMCA, in addition to working as a reporter for the school newspaper–and is the daughter of an FBI agent, to boot. Yet when Vince reveals his family’s true identity to her, she is not appalled, as he had expected, but thrilled. It turns out that she has a romantic, rebellious streak, and likes the idea of being star-crossed lovers. For that matter, even the FBI agents investigating Vince’s family show themselves to be devious and careless; Vince is shocked and furious when he finds that he, a more or less innocent teenager, is under investigation, even while all of the grown, hardened criminals in his family run free.

Vince’s main confidante in the novel is not his best friend, Alex, but Ray Francione. As an undercover FBI agent, and therefore a man who has to be devious in his daily life, in order to do the right thing in the long run, Ray Francione embodies the confusing moral universe that Vince must navigate. During their final confrontation, Ray at first lies to Vince, then threatens him with a gun. Yet Vince is certain that these bullying and cowardly acts do not represent the “real” Ray, but only the role that he is being forced to play (as well as his panic at being about to lose this role). Vince is certain that, for all of the falseness surrounding their friendship, there was something good and truthful at the heart of it. He persuades Ray to give up his gun by walking calmly towards him: “I’m propelled by a voice inside me, somewhere below gut level, that keeps repeating: This is Ray. He won’t hurt you” (236). 

His instincts prove correct, not only because Ray does put down the gun but because he later goes out of his way to defend Vince to Kendra. This is a small, kind act on his part, one done voluntarily and with no expectation of a reward; it is therefore, as Vince perceives, immensely valuable, enough so to justify Vince’s having to face down a loaded gun. If Vince comes to any realization about goodness by the end of the novel, it is that it speaks in a soft voice, rather than a lecturing one, and that it also involves great courage.