Violence In The Iliad
The affinity relating The Godfather to The Iliad as far as violence is concerned resides in the former’s enclosure only to its own mafia world, and the latter’s sole concern about the Trojan War. In other words, Chris Messenger noted that determining the tensions in a text like The Godfather lays in its remaining epic material and its urge to expose in the novel form. The epic material in this case is Puzo’s notion of Cosa Nostra that Messenger defines as “Our thing, synonymous with Our World” (Ibid, 233); or rather gangsterism is the result of our background. For Messenger, Cosa Nostra in Puzo’s novel becomes an effective society for the Five Families, and it comprises all the family members within it, leaving outside its consideration all
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In simple terms, violence is glorified, especially, through the victory of the immoral over the moral, and the traditional Sicilian nature, or Cosa Nostra that is inherent in Puzo’s heroes over the modern American organized world. It demonstrates the Corleones unwillingness to adopt the new culture they find themselves faced with. This is mirrored in Puzo’s willingness to preserve the ancient practices of his heroes’ ancestors. Another important dimension lays as Gérard Genette’s argued in the reader’s response to the text or the catharsis it imparts in relation to the hypotext. The Godfather transmits to readers psychologically immoral feelings that have long been forgotten under the guise of humanity and logic (Fiedler; Messenger). Messenger relates Fiedler’s psychoanalyst view to the morality of The Godfather with its character’s violation of all forms of institutions, and its inability as a modern text to teach but instead to affect our conscious dreams, thus, he concluded that these narratives “draw on our atavistic reader’s affiliation.” (Ibid, 230) This ‘affiliation’ is the one we share while reading the Iliad which is a primitive text imparting in us human’s desire for murder and violence without any form of governmental restrictions; the pure nature of humanity driven by its animalistic
In simple terms, violence is glorified, especially, through the victory of the immoral over the moral, and the traditional Sicilian nature, or Cosa Nostra that is inherent in Puzo’s heroes over the modern American organized world. It demonstrates the Corleones unwillingness to adopt the new culture they find themselves faced with. This is mirrored in Puzo’s willingness to preserve the ancient practices of his heroes’ ancestors. Another important dimension lays as Gérard Genette’s argued in the reader’s response to the text or the catharsis it imparts in relation to the hypotext. The Godfather transmits to readers psychologically immoral feelings that have long been forgotten under the guise of humanity and logic (Fiedler; Messenger). Messenger relates Fiedler’s psychoanalyst view to the morality of The Godfather with its character’s violation of all forms of institutions, and its inability as a modern text to teach but instead to affect our conscious dreams, thus, he concluded that these narratives “draw on our atavistic reader’s affiliation.” (Ibid, 230) This ‘affiliation’ is the one we share while reading the Iliad which is a primitive text imparting in us human’s desire for murder and violence without any form of governmental restrictions; the pure nature of humanity driven by its animalistic