But when Michael woos Kay in New Hampshire, he tells her that his father is "like any other powerful man with responsibility for others," and implies that senators and governors have people killed. So, he seems to have adopted the idea that if they can be considered legitimate, so should Vito--and he.
If memory serves, the actual reference was to senators and
presidents. But I take your point nonetheless.
By this time, Michael was already well into his apprenticeship with Vito, so he had already turned the corner, so to speak, with regard to the process of self-justification that would have allowed him to find a sense of moral equilibrium with the things he was doing - and was about to do. So it's not surprising that he would use such an argument as this - particularly to assuage the apprehensions of the "civilian" woman he was about to marry. Whether Michael really believed deep down that a Mafia don was morally equivalent to a president or to a U.S. senator is quite another matter. But it's doubtful, I would say.
To your analysis: was Michael's perennial quest for legitimacy a rationale for his behavior? Or, was it his way of trying to live up to his father's expectations for him that had been dashed when he killed Sol and Mac?
Well, it was certainly a motive for his behavior, I would say. Whether he was motivated chiefly by the need to keep some sense of peace with his own soul, or to live up to his father's discarded expectations for him - or some combination of the two - it's clear that the conflict between Michael's longing for legitimacy, and the Machiavellian demands of his actual life, defined the unresolved turmoil that raged within him for the rest of his life.
For that reason, I'm unable to view Michael as entirely evil - despite the many evil things that he did. I view him as a desperate prisoner of circumstance, with a crushing weight of responsibility from which he could never escape. In many ways, Michael must have been profoundly lonely. After Vito died, there wasn't a single person to whom he could ever turn, who was capable of comprehending what it felt like to be in his shoes - not Kay, not Mama, not Fredo, not even Tom.
In the novel, Vito says that "a man has but one destiny." He was referring to Sonny's decision not to go to law school, but to follow him in the olive oil business. Did Michael have "but one destiny"?
Vito might have thought so. I'm not convinced. I believe that one creates his/her own destiny, through one's own desires & choices.
But even if it is true that one has but a single destiny, one always has the choice of whether to pursue it - or not. One always has control over one's own choices & behavior - even if one seldom has control over the consequences of those choices or behaviors.
