Paolo Andolini

If Paolo had not been murdered but Antonio and thier mother had been do you think the two brothers would have started a family in Sicily, or moved to America together? Maybe the Andolini family and Paolo as don with Vito as underboss? I think I can remember hearing that Genco's family were friends with the Andolini's in Sicily so Genco would be consigliere to Paolo? Or they moved to New York worked as low time enforcers to Fanucci? I would think that Paolo was ruthless like Michael so he would rise to be Fanucci's bodyguard and then stab him in the back. Do you think differently?

Vito's ascendency to premier Don of the Nation's underworld was incipient with his experience with Fanucci. There was no predilection on the part of the Andolini boys to engage in an underworld career. Their father was murdered because he stood up to the local Mafiosi; his son was murdered becauase the Mafiosi feared he would seek revenge. Many of Sicily's males have eneded up dead because of vendetta that have nothing to do with the Mafia. As the novel says, it's quite possible that had Vito not encountered Fanucci, he would have ended up as a grocer.

There is nothing in that scene that suggests that the Andolini family had enough clout to challenge Don Ciccio, best him, and establish a Mafia family. If anything, the scene suggests that they were victims of the kind of vicious violence that the Mafia perpetrated on ordinary peasants in Sicily at that time.

But Paolo swore revenge and if successful he could have been catapulted into the Don-ship of Corleone. His father was already gutsy to go up against Ciccio. The apple doesnt fall far from the tree.