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Michael: “Fredo, you’re nothing to me now. You’re not a brother, you’re not a friend. I don’t want to know you or what you do.”
(The Godfather Part II)
After Fredo admits that he had contact with Hyman Roth, thereby aiding the attack on Michael’s life, Michael dismisses his older brother from his life with these words. Fredo insists quite believably that he had no idea that Michael would be attacked, but Michael doesn’t care. In dismissing Fredo so coldly, he displays the same ruthlessness with which he has carried out many of his actions. As strong and forceful as these words are, Michael is not done punishing Fredo. At the end of the movie, Michael has his brother murdered. If one had to pick a single climactic moment for the entire trilogy, the murder of Fredo would probably be it. There is a sense in this action that Michael has so internalized the role of Godfather, adopted the mantra “it’s business, not personal” so completely, that there is no other way he could act.
Don Ciccio, we learn in the same movie, wants to kill the nine-year-old Vito Andolini, because if he doesn’t, Vito will come back one day and kill him. Murdering a young child may seem extreme, but the plot proves Don Ciccio correct. There is a clear logic behind retributive killing: if I don’t kill my enemy, he will kill me first. Vengeance is taken not out of any sense of honor, but as a mode of self-protection. It is a rational, rather than emotional, act. At first, the killing of Fredo seems consistent with this logic, but it may not be. Unlike Carlo, Connie’s husband, whom Michael also had killed, Fredo appears unlikely ever to intentionally hurt Michael. His carelessness, while dangerous, is probably manageable. But even if Fredo did want to hurt Michael, he probably would not be able to. If Michael were to bide by the words in this quotation and never speak to Fredo again, there would be no way that weak, insecure, fearful Fredo could touch him.
Rather than the prime example of Michael’s sangfroid, the murder of Fredo is in fact evidence of Michael’s greatest weakness. As much as it appears to be a decision of ruthless efficiency, the perfect business act of the perfect don, the killing is nothing if not personal. Michael cannot tolerate treachery and has a compulsive need for vengeance. This, more than anything else, is his fatal flaw. In The Godfather, the peace between the five families is made because Vito forswears his right to vengeance for Sonny’s death. But Michael is never able to make a comparable decision. The significance of this quotation is that Michael is unable to abide by what he says. When vengeance becomes emotional, rather than strategic, an unending cycle of violence results. This is the lesson that Michael learns in Part III. Despite his great desire and many attempts to become “legitimate,” he cannot escape the web of murder that he has played such a large part in weaving.
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