Karakterler

Carlo Rizzi

He is a handsome young man who could be considered a Northern Italian mixed-blood. After getting involved in petty crimes, he came from Nevada to New York, became friends with Sonny Corleone, and thus married Connie Corleone. Despite entering the Corleone family, he feels alienated and believes he is not given important work. With this sense of humiliation, he constantly exerts physical violence on his wife, Connie. By secretly colluding with the Barzini family and beating his wife, he ensures that Sonny impulsively heads out and falls into an ambush. Years later, he is held accountable for this treachery by Michael and killed.

Kay Adams

A modern, well-educated young American woman from New Hampshire, coming from WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) traditions. She falls in love with Michael during her college years. Initially completely unaware of the dark and bloody world of the Corleone family, she thinks Michael is an ordinary citizen detached from his family. Although Michael's disappearance and the suspicion of murder terrify her, her love prevails and she agrees to marry him. The mafia realities she is kept out of throughout their marriage and her husband's transformation into a cold-blooded killer force her into a constant internal conflict and loneliness.

Luca Brasi

The most loyal, but also the most savage and terrifying enforcer of the Corleone family. Aside from Don Vito Corleone, he fears no one and respects no one. He is a psychopath so dehumanized that he would throw his own newborn child into a furnace alive. He is the family's biggest trump card against enemies. When Don Corleone sends him to infiltrate the Tattaglia family, he is lured into a trap and killed by Sollozzo and his men, who garrote him. His death is the first major sign of how serious the war is.

Mario Puzo

Mario Puzo was born on 15 October 1920 in Hell's Kitchen, New York, the child of an Italian family that had emigrated from Avellino. His father worked as a railroad trackman; when Puzo was twelve, he was committed to a hospital with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. His mother, Maria, raised seven children alone. Puzo spent his childhood in that poor immigrant neighbourhood, taking refuge in reading. He served in Germany with the United States Army Air Forces during the Second World War, and afterwards studied at the City College of New York. His first story appeared in 1950. The Dark Arena (1955), set in postwar Germany, and The Fortunate Pilgrim (1964), drawn from his mother's immigrant life, earned good reviews but almost no readers. He made his living writing stories for men's magazines under a pen name. At forty-five, with five children and deep in debt, it was time, as he put it, to grow up and sell out. The Godfather appeared in 1969, sold more than nine million copies in two years and stayed sixty-seven weeks on the bestseller lists. The first two film adaptations, written with Francis Ford Coppola, brought him two Academy Awards; he also wrote the screenplay for Superman. Puzo liked to say that he had never met a real mafia boss. By building the criminal organisation as a family, an order of loyalty and debt, he changed the way American popular fiction looked at crime. He said his own favourite book was The Fortunate Pilgrim, and that it saddened him to see it overshadowed by The Godfather. After The Sicilian and The Last Don, he died of heart failure at his home on Long Island on 2 July 1999.

Michael Corleone

He is the youngest son who refuses to get involved in the family's criminal world, wanting to be a law-abiding American citizen through his university education. He is a decorated hero of World War II. However, after the assassination attempt on his father threatens the destruction of the family, the Corleone dormant within him awakens. With his intelligence and incredible cold-bloodedness, he saves the family by killing Sollozzo and police captain McCluskey, and flees to Sicily. The bloody end of his marriage to Apollonia in Sicily transforms him into a completely ruthless, emotionless, and calculating character. After returning to America, he follows in his father's footsteps, destroying all his enemies with even more brutal and absolute power to become the new Don.

Sonny (Santino) Corleone

Vito Corleone's eldest son and right-hand man. He is seen as the heir to the family, but his hot-headed and impulsive nature is his greatest enemy. Although he is extremely fearless and skilled in street fights and war management, he lacks strategic patience and cunning. After his father is shot, he takes over the leadership of the family and, acting with a thirst for revenge, turns the streets of New York into a bloodbath. He is overly fond of his sister Connie, who is his weakness. As a result of Carlo Rizzi using this weakness to provoke him, he sets out alone and unprotected, and is tragically killed, riddled with bullets in the crossfire set up at the toll booth.

Tom Hagen

An orphan of German-Irish descent, he was rescued from the streets and brought home by Sonny Corleone, and raised and educated by Vito Corleone just like his own children. He received a legal education and became the family's unofficial 'Consigliere'. Because he is not Sicilian, he is looked down upon by other mafia families. He is an extremely logical, cool-headed lawyer who uses legal loopholes perfectly. He conducts negotiations during family wars but lacks ruthlessness in street tactics. After Michael takes charge, he is gradually withdrawn from active mafia affairs and transitioned into the family's legal counsel.

Virgil Sollozzo

Known in the underworld as 'The Turk', he is an intelligent, calculating, and very dangerous drug trafficker. With the secret support of the Tattaglia family, he requests political and legal protection from Don Corleone to establish a drug market. When the Don rejects this offer, he arranges a ruthless ambush to eliminate him. Upon Vito Corleone's survival, he makes new plans by collaborating with Captain McCluskey, but his life ends when Michael Corleone unexpectedly shoots him in a restaurant.

Vito Corleone

Vito Corleone is the respected and feared leader of one of the most powerful mafia families in America. He is a brilliant strategist who keeps politicians and judges in his pocket to protect his family from the dangers of the outside world. After his family was massacred in Sicily during his childhood, he migrated to America and built a massive criminal empire from scratch. As he defines himself, he is a 'businessman'; extremely generous to his friends and unprecedentedly brutal to his enemies. He refuses to enter the drug trade, believing it will shake his power in the future, and this decision drags the family into a bloody war. Despite surviving a heavy assassination attempt, he realizes he is getting old and hands the keys to his empire to his smartest son, Michael, whom he trusts most. In his final years, he dies in his garden as an old man looking only for peace.