after watching gfII last night and reading some of the threads about a young vito, it made me think about how michael and vito were essentially the same person in many ways. the godfather trilogy is a kind of tragedy in that michael ends up dying alone after losing his family, etc. gfII shows how michael was so obsessed with killing all his enemies that it eventually cost him his family (i.e. killing roth when it really gained him nothing but satisfaction). this is why he died alone, rather than celebrated as a great man like vito. but gfII also shows vito returning to sicily to take revenge on ciccio at about the same age that michael had roth killed. i think this shows how similiar they were. later on vito and michael both lost their desire to kill everyone, just those who posed a threat to them. so the same actions and attitude led to two entirely different destinies. obviously, the era in which they lived played a part, but i think the biggest reason vito turned out a hero and michael a tragedy was the difference between carmella and kay. vito had an italian wife, who didn't care about how vito made his living, as long as he provided for her, typical of the old-world wife. kay was typical of the new breed of american women: headstrong, ambitious, and liberated. she wasn't just satisfied with michael providing for her like carmella. i'm sure most of you are yelling, "thank you captain obvious" at why i bothered to post this, but i think it also ties to something said in another thread about how fabrizio's murder had more of a place in the story than appollonia's breasts, and i agree, due to what i've just written. fabrizio is central to michael's downfall, more than any other character in the trilogy, so it is vital to include his murder. if fabrizio hadn't killed appollonia, she and michael would have returned to america as husband and wife. nothing else would have changed, michael would still have become don, and, rather than have a wife who rejects his lifestyle, he would have had a wife just like carmella who would provide him with as many children as he wished, never interfere, and be happy. michael's death would have more than likely been exactly like vitos. he would have been celebrated by all his family as a wonderful and great man, rather than have a dog licking his corpse.

I absolutely agree with you that Kay was wrong kind of wife for him. And in significance of Apollonia’s death, and Fabrizzio’s. I always blamed Puzo and Coppola for cutting this scene. There’s only one thing I blame them more for – writing the GF3.
But even if we take it as we see in movies, I cannot agree that their deaths were so much different. To me, they seem strikingly alike.
Vito died almost alone too, also falling on the ground of his favorite garden in which he spent quiet days of his retirement. He had only a child playing around, and the child, animal child, or human, is not a rational companion to death. The boy kept running for a while around his dead body, crying that he loved him, without any idea of what happened. And Mike’s little puppy, if it could, would say to his master the same thing.
Afterwards, when Vito’s death was discovered, everyone came out crying, and there was a royal funeral.
Mike couldn’t be alone in the house, being sick, he needed always someone to help him. We can be sure that Connie was always living with him. Maybe Al Neri, also very old and retired, was there to help him and give him company; we know that Mike was the closest and dearest person for him in the world.
Of course, they could leave him alone to sit in the garden. Maybe, just a minute ago Connie went to the house after bringing him the orange… Few minutes later she would see what happened through the window, everyone would run out crying, and there would be a royal funeral.
Much more royal, I think, than Vito’s. Vincent will take care of it. After all, Michael Corleone was the most powerful, great and bloody Mafia Chief of the century. Vito never dreamed of such a power. He must have been a great and horrible legend of criminal world. If Vincent was clever enough to learn half the lessons Mike gave him, he must have retained the strength of the Family, and he must be still the capo di capi. That means – in the middle of attention.
Everyone imaginable (Even the Catholic Church, I think, because he was the knight of st’Sebastian) would show respect, and all papers will publish huge materials about “The deadliest Lord of Mafia”, “The epoch gone” , “The last Roman Emperor of the underworld” and something like that , containing the materials of senate hearings, and endless rumors and reports about his bloodiness, ruthlessness, coolness and cunning. They will wonder, perhaps, what a great president we all lost, when such a genius of strategy, with such brains, became a criminal. And of course they will publish awesome figures of financial operations of now-legitimized Corleone Empire.
Maybe his son, a famous singer, will cut his concert trip to attend at the funeral. Whatever grudges we carry to each other, they are erased by death, and in all years past, he must have grown adult enough to understand and accept his father, to be capable of better feelings than his own egoism. Like once Johnny Fontane on Vito’s funeral, he will make tabloid headlines by saying through tears, something like that he knew his father always dreamed to die in Sicily, in the midst of June, when earth is covered by blossom and air is filled with fragrance and spirit of love. And that by fulfilling his dream exactly, God must have shown his benevolence to the old sinner in the last years of his life.
All the family will certainly assemble there. I only think we shall not see there his enemies, because he left no enemies behind…
And Kay ,old and ugly wrinkled , aging in seclusion with her old and crippled husband, who is already half in marasmus senility , will buy all the papers in their variety, and cry over them incessantly, kissing the photos of young Michael , and of course she will go to the funeral, because she always loved him, and she always, she always will .
He will be buried solemnly in New York, near his father. I think that he loved his father so dearly that he certainly made that the first point in his will.
I don’t see why should we think it a tragedy that there was no crowd of society around him in his last years. When we retire, it is to have a rest from that crowd. To be alone and think. They did so both – Mike and Vito. They wished to be alone, close to nature, in the quiet silence of his garden. Vito spent time with his tomatoes because it reminded him of Sicily, where he was happy before the death of his family, parents and brother. Mike went to Sicily to die in the place where he was happy too, where he felt his most true love, before the death of his own family, wife and unborn child.
And they both lost a grown up child because of business...
I think he was not so lonely. He had Connie with him, Vincent, who, as we know, loved him and considered him as his father, busy as he was with family business, would visit him often.
Perhaps his son would become smarter. Maybe other kids would come, nephews and nieces. Tom’s kids too, especially Andrew, who was so near in Rome.
Tragedy is not in loneliness of death. Tragedy is in sufferings of life, for those you lost.

No, no. Michael was an imitation of his father. His father's motivation's were rooted in real substantive and tragic experiences - his family wiped out and the need to attain a position of strength that would make him invulnerable to life's slings and arrows. Michael was motivated by anger. His obsession with protecting his family as he told Kay he spent his life doing sounded hollow. In protecting his family, he was just imitating his father, going through the motions. His father really loved his family - Michael simply had a family. Could Vito have ever, ever even considered killing his own flesh and blood? I think not.

I'll play the devil's advocate and take a different stance on this thread.

Two points to be made:

[1]
He loved the "all-american" Kay Adams and the "all-american" potential she had for himself. This is what he desperately sought after his entire life. He finaly realizes that such a life is not possible for men in his ranks, and this wife of his is not the all-sicilian woman his brand of life requires. GFII is one scene after another of the America that Michael dreams of consistently rejecting him: the senator, Roth, the courts, and ultimately Kay.

So?, did he love Kay Adams? This is the closest he ever came to saying it:

His voice sounded absentmided. "You know, when I came home I wasn't that glad when I saw my family, my father, my mother, my sister Connie, and Tom. It was nice but I didn't really give a damn. Then I came home tonight and saw you in the kitchen and I was glad. Is that what you mean by love?"

Ironic that he compares her with the things of his chosen alienation. I'd have to say yes, but not in the conventional way.

[2]
If you compare this with the way Vito viewed his family; "A man that doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man"; you see an obvious flaw in Michael's thinking.

"Are you happy with your wife and kids?" Vito is constantly reminding him of the perils of the life they have chosen --> If your not careful, IT CHANGES YOU!!!

Vito and Michael start off as the same person seeking the American dream; "I never wanted this for you ... there just wasn't enought time ... we'll get there Pop"; but Michael slowly loses the bearing on life that his father had. One rejection after another --> he becomes nothing like his father.

-----

Kay was not the wrong wife for Michael, it was the other way around. He was the wrong husband for her. His eyes were too big for his stomach. He wanted the American dream right there and now. What took Vito a two generations to accomplish, Michael wanted to seal up within a few years. You cannot blame anyone else for his failures. Michael was his own true enemy the entire time.

what can you say about the tragedy of the godfather that isn't already said. and i have to admire the three or four posts above me for writing beautiful posts.

but in all reality this was not what mike wanted out of his life. he did not want to follow his father's footsteps, that is why he went to such great lengths to avoid his entire family. he goes to a university far from home. he fights in a war to get away from his father's meangling with his life. but it does not stop him from loving his father, which obviously leads him to the killing of solozzo. after that did mike just give in to his destiny? i think so. i think by this time he was so tired of running away from it all that he just resigned to the fact that he had to do this. and his life in a way does parallel vito. as stated above, they both lose a child. the difference is, vito lost Santino the substatute don for the corleone family. mike lost mary. just mary. she didn't have any part of the underworld. so when mike lost mary, it's a bigger tragedy because she wasn't even supposed to be a target. sonny was, you knew, sonny knew, vito knew that eventually someone could catch up to sonny. once again i feel sorry for mike, because maybe if appolonia didn't die he would have just brought her to america and tried to teach her an american way of life, instead of joining his father. after all clamenza or tessio could have easily ran the corleone empire. there was no need of blood replacing blood. maybe it was the death of appolonia that drove mike over the edge. not so much his fathers attack. maybe mike looked at it in the point of view of a soliar doing his duty. he killed for that brief moment, and knew that after that there might not be any more need for that.

i don't know, maybe im wrong, but i see mike as the tragic figure. not as a ruthless, coldhearted person. he just happened to be in the wrong family.

Why so chosen? And why so desperately? I really wrote such endless posts about that, it wouldn't be polite to post quotes from myself. So I just send you to my 1st two posts in this topic:
GF3 question
Mike-kay relationship is a thing to write about, and i shall do it soon.
I just want to say that to make such a didactical tragedy from his life was not the original idea. There's no moralization in the novel, we never see clues at his capability of being so desperate.
Maybe after the book and 1 movie were so criticized for romantization of gangster life, FFC felt that only apology for what they did would be to make Mike's future life as tragic as possible, it would be instructive for public...
He didn't care that it was totally out of the logic of story and characters. Maybe, he would feel so at their place, but they were made from a little different material, or they would be film directors, not gangsters!

Well, I may have wrong kind of imagination, but I really don't think that the senator, stupid, crooked and greasy as he was, is "the America that Michael dreams of". And Roth, who also hardly represents America. Also criminal, illegal and hiding, he was finally rejected by America himself, and even his motherland refused to take him. The courts, by the way, were also ingeneered by Roth, And I don't think that Mike had such love and trust for him to be in such a shock about his betrayal, that could actually change him.
He wished success and succeeded, with senator, courts, and finally Roth.
I think "Modern" parts of GF2, as any seqel being added to the original, is nothing equal to the original in it's integrity. It has clever passages, and stupid as well. I think that FFC's attempt to make Michael undergo such a terrible inner change, to become what was necessary to kill Fredo, was not the best of them. Remember, that Puzo was against the killing, as absolutely unnatural thing for the character HE created. For such a change requires causes, and I don't see enough logic here. However strong he felt about Fredo's betrayal, it couldn't be such a thorough surprise and disappointment, he knew that Fredo was inclined "to take sides against the family". After all, I dont think that knowing how little trust Vito had in Fredo, holding him in control, Mike would trust him so much as to give him absolute liberty without even checking his phone. That would be strange overlook for Michael. He was not sentimental. The most important thing about him and Vito, that makes them so alike each other, is the power they had to control their emotions, the natural inclination never to display them, never to show anything to anybody. And the possibility to feel “no grief, no fear, just a cold rage.” To make him suffering so because of being betrayed is strange. Vito always suspected everybody, his closest friends, members of his family. it gave him no kind of paranoia, as well as Michael. Michael even in his youth was no tender, vulnerable princess. He defied his father’s will without pain or regret, he was too strong to depend on other people and too smart to have such entire belief in humanity that could be tragically lost. He was betrayed all the way in book, he was perfectly ready for it, used to it, it never gave him such a shock. Even when Fabrizio betrayed him, and his beloved wife was dead, he took it manly. He did not cry, shout, tear his hair off , emotions are unnecessary stuff for the MEN OF DEED. He only named price for his head. Very calmly. Remember, when Tom left his crying wife in the parlour, he thought “He hadn’t lived with the Corleone family 10 years for nothing.” He thought it with pride. Remember Vito learning that he lost Sonny. They were manly, they would never make a self-changing tragedy even from the most painful loss. Unlike Coppola.

Michael had choice at every stage of his life, and made the wrong choices. The main theme of his post-Sicily life--making himself "legitimate"--failed because he tried to define legitimization on his own, tortured, hypocritical terms. Basically he said, "I'm no worse than a lot of crooked politicians and other pezzanovanti. Why should I be considered a criminal?" He missed the point: you can't shine shit. Crime is crime.

Kay brilliantly called him out on this point early in GFIII. At his party, he shouts at Kay, "I protected my family from the horrors of this world." But Kay replies, "But you became my horror." Right, Kay!

I thought about one more thing:
To make their fates even more similar Coppola invented an elder brother for Vito, “young Paolo”, who was killed by a Mafia chief because of his conflict with their father and had to be revenged later.

^^^ Coppola didnt invent that, Puzo did in the original novel.

No, In the original novel Vito was his father's only son. And, BTW, he was there 12 years old when his father was killed, which makes more sense to my opinion.

This made me think a lot, and I found no considerable fault or difference in their ways of thinking.
The moment to which Mike referred in this phrase was not a common moment in his life. He miraculously survived a terrible attempt at his life, he spent a week unconscious, and when he came to consciousness he could barely talk and turn his head. As an additional formidable blow his beloved wife and her unborn child were killed. His health, nerves, soul, all his powers must have been so exhausted that even after 3 months’ recovery he hardly could feel strong emotional excitements.
Besides, we know how he loved his family, how unwillingly did he leave, saying to Tom: “Do your best (to arrange the return), I don’t want to do another 3-year stretch away from home.”
In “The Sicilian” we read that he was rather annoyed when his father put his journey off for a few days, because of being anxious to get home and see everyone he loved. When Clemenza comes to Sicily the first thing Mike talks to him about is how everybody is doing. He asks him again and again to tell about his father’s and mama’s health. When he came home and was sitting besides his father he felt safe for the first time since he left.
Considering all this, he simply could not feel that “he didn’t give a damn”. Why did he say so? I believe he was disappointed for not feeling more. But that is a way of human nature. Longing to see them as he did, for more than 2 years, he was expecting the meeting with such anticipation of overwhelming joy that he was to be disappointed anyway. Even perfectly natural feeling would seem insufficient in comparison with his exaggerated expectations, and still less what he could feel in his, not very joyful, state of mind. Long expected events never give us the glee we calculate on, in fact we feel much more anticipating them, and that’s the way of things we have to put up with. (And what a good writer you have to be to catch such a subtle point! )
When he met Kay he was 6 months at home and better recovered, and another bonus was that the meeting was completely unexpected. Being unprepared, he felt glad and not a bit of this feeling was lost in expectation.

We have no reason to think that Michael spent less time with his family than Vito. Of course he had to leave them for several months after the hit attempt, but that was a unique situation of extreme importance and danger. When he comes from important Vegas trip and says to Kay that he has to see his father that evening and tell him the results of it, she shows her disappointment and even raises her voice in protest, reproaching him, which shows us that it was unusual thing for him to do.
We know from the book that when Vito was building his empire, “He was a devoted father and husband but so busy he could spare his family little of his time.» And we know that because of his father’s being too busy, Clemenza had taken Michael on outings and brought him gifts. Did it mean that Mike’s friends were his father’s buttonmen? Also we remember that Clemenza was better informed about Sonny’s life and deed than his father.
On large-scale celebrations of family events Vito as well as Michael let his relatives amuse themselves at the festivities while he was doing business behind the door of his study.
Both loved their children, and every minute they could spare from business they would spend with them. This is additional proof for me that Michael would never, and for no reason possible, give his children to Kay. They were HIS children and that meant much for him.
Vito could be as cruel to the members of his own family as to anyone else, when they disappointed him. We don’t know if he could kill his flesh and blood, his flesh and blood never gave him sufficient reason and he never had to undergo such a trial. But actually despite all sweet talking about his love for his family, we never get a hint that he was as weak and snotty as to forgive them anything, or love them despite anything they did. If you doubt – remember this dialogue:
Vito: “I hear I wouldn’t recognize my own son. It seems he’s a cook now, and he amuses himself with young girls more than a grown man should.”…
Tom: «Do you want me to call Freddie home for a few days?”
“The Don shook his head. He said cruelly, “What for? My wife can still cook our meals. Let him stay out there.” The three men shifted uneasily in their seats. They had not realized Freddie was in such severe disfavor with his father”.