60 pages • 2 hours read
Mario PuzoThe Godfather
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1968A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 23 Summary
Michael has been in Sicily for five months and is beginning to understand his father, the other Mafia men, and his mother. He is staying with the local Mafia chief Don Tommasino, and his identity has been kept a secret. While there, he learns more about Sicilian culture and history, including how the customs followed by the families in the United States had their origins in Sicily. He spends most of his time taking walks with the two shepherds who have been assigned, as armed bodyguards, to watch him. Sometimes he walks all the way to Corleone, his father’s hometown. Michael’s face continues to have lasting damage from McCluskey’s punch. He refuses to have surgery on his face, and his appearance helps him blend into the local population; because they are too poor for medical care, such conditions are relatively common.
One day, seven months into his stay, Michael and the two shepherds go for a walk in the mountains beyond Corleone. The three men stop to eat lunch and see some local girls. One girl runs into them accidentally, and Michael is struck by the “thunderbolt,” as one of the shepherds say. All of the local men seem to recognize this expression, which represents love at first sight. They go to the nearest local village and drink wine at the local café, but when they ask about the girl, the cafe owner brushes them off. It turns out that the girl is his daughter, Apollonia. Instead of leaving, Michael apologizes to the man and states his intention to marry the girl. The cafe owner realizes that Michael is somehow important and could secure his daughter’s and his family’s future. He invites him to their house on Sunday afternoon. Michael visits on Sunday and gives presents that show how affluent and serious he is. Eventually, Michael and Apollonia get married.
Soon after, he meets a woman named Filomena, who knows that his father is Don Corleone. She tells the story of how Don Corleone saved her life when she had a confrontation with Luca Brasi. She was a midwife, and he forced her to deliver a baby and then burn it in an incinerator. She went to Don Corleone, who protected her and eventually helped her and her husband return to Italy. The morning after Michael meets Filomena, Don Tommasino drives into Palermo and returns with the news that Sonny has been killed.
Chapter 24 Summary
Apollonia is pregnant, and she and Michael are due to be transferred to another house elsewhere in Sicily. Their marriage has made Michael visible, hence the relocation. Michael, Apollonia, and the two shepherds will leave for their new location first thing in the morning.
The next morning, Apollonia is sitting in the driver’s seat of the car when they are ready to leave. She has been learning to drive and wants to pull the car to where Michael is standing. Michael sees one of the shepherds sneaking out of the yard, and the other is with Apollonia at the car. She starts the car to pull it forward, and the car explodes. Apollonia and the shepherd are killed. Michael recovers in a safe house in the mountains, and everyone believes that he is dead. It has been a week since the explosion. Michael decides he wants to return home and join the family. After three months, he is able to fly to New York.
Chapters 23-24 Analysis
Finally, the reader is given insight into what Michael has been doing during all this activity in New York. Everyone in New York assumes that Michael’s stay in Sicily will take away from his training in the family business and feel that it is too bad that he is gone for so long. However, Michael is absorbing the Sicilian culture of his parents that underpins the entire Mafia operation in the United States. He is receiving an education that will serve him well when he does return to New York. Michael notices that he is beginning to understand the Sicilians in a deeper way. And he better understands his father, the decisions he has made, and his notion of destiny as a foundational belief. As Michael notes, “in Sicily he saw what they would have been if they had chosen not to struggle against their fate” (431). This connects to an earlier moment in the book, in the early history of the Don, where he consciously makes the decision to push back against Fanucci, knowing it is his destiny.
Another concept that comes up in this section is the “thunderbolt” that Michael experiences, which is a metaphor for love at first sight. It provides insight into Sicilian gender dynamics. The men all want to feel the thunderbolt and to be so swept away by a woman that they are fully within that woman’s power. And yet, as is pointed out in the text, “This young man would be putty in their daughter’s hands until they were married. After that of course things would change but it wouldn’t matter” (453). Once they are married, according to Sicilian culture, the man is in full control of the relationship and the family, implying that, once he possesses her, she loses her power over him.
When Michael returns home later in the text and immediately marries Kay, readers understand that this marriage is not based in the “thunderbolt”; rather, it is rooted in practical considerations and an obvious—though hardly earth-shattering—affection. Readers cannot be sure if Michael loves Kay, but it is clear that he has other reasons for wanting to marry and start a family with her.
The reader can only assume that Michael feels Apollonia’s death deeply, because the text never addresses it. Yet the text implies that Apollonia’s death has been the final straw that leads Michael to decide to irrevocably commit to the Corleone family.
