The work?[]
The Godfather is a book by Mario Puzo, adapted into a film trilogy by Francis Ford Coppola, focusing on the Corleone family and its war against the other New York crime families who are trying to eliminate Vito Corleone, whose youngest son, Michael, becomes drawn into the family business and ultimately takes his father’s place.
Who is he?[]
He’s introduced marrying Connie, Vito’s daughter, at the wedding at the start. It soon becomes clear he only married her for the money and to try to get a position in the Corleone family, and he quickly becomes abusive to Connie while plotting to get a better position for himself despite his overall incompetence.
What Makes him Pathetic?[]
He’s an abusive bully with no likable traits whatsoever as he marries Connie only for money and status he thinks it will give him and almost immediately becomes abusive to her, regularly belittling her and beating her (even when she’s pregnant) while taking her money and blowing it on gambling, while also cheating on her and rubbing it in her face. When Connie’s brother Sonny discovers the abuse and beats Carlo up, Carlo plots with the Barzini family to kill Sonny, escalating the abuse to lure Sonny into an ambush where he’s brutally gunned down by Barzini’s men. The Corleones however realize what happened, and after becoming the new don Michael Corleone pretends he’s going to show mercy, only to have Carlo killed immediately after.
Mitigating traits?[]
The book has a throwaway line saying he finds it hard to commit cold-blooded murder (unlike Sonny) but this isn't meant to make him sympathetic but to emphasize his cowardice as it says he's incapable of appreciating that this might make him better than Sonny, but sees it as a sign of his own weakness. The fact that he's scared and begs Michael for mercy before his death isn't played for sympathy either, it just further shows his cowardice and while Connie is distraught by his death it's because she doesn't feel she could raise her son alone, and she's also in denial that he got Sonny killed so it doesn't make him a scapegoat.
What Makes him a Pinhead?[]
He’s a coward who happily abuses his wife but tries to run from Sonny when he comes after him and doesn’t even try to fight back, and he’s also too incompetent to be useful to the Corleones and his requests for a better position are swiftly shut down. The book even notes that when put in charge of a minor gambling racket, he immediately screws it up by recording the wrong odds on a game, creating a situation called a “middle” where the gambler couldn’t possibly lose and he would have to pay out more than he should, causing a loss of thousands of dollars, resulting in Tom Hagen subsequently ordering men to supervise Carlo to make sure his figures were right, with Carlo just being allowed to think he was still in charge.
More seriously, he fails to realize that regularly beating and abusing the daughter of a Mafia don might land him in serious trouble, and while Vito feels unable to intervene due to his traditionalist beliefs, the hot-headed Sonny doesn’t agree and when he learns of the beatings he nearly kills Carlo, only for Carlo to escalate things further by getting Sonny killed (which was Barzini’s plan so it took no intelligence on Carlo’s part) and thinking he’d be in the clear, when all it did was confirm to the family that he was a traitor. Furthermore when Michael (who is the new don and has just had his other enemies whacked) claims he’s merely exiling him from the family business as punishment for Sonny’s murder, Carlo actually believes he’s getting off this lightly and is taken by surprise when he’s garroted by Clemenza.
Verdict?[]
Yes.