Answering the Call

When the movie “The Godfather” is compared to some of the concepts in the Hero’s Journey, there are many of the same archetypes. At the point that we are at so far in the film, I have seen some of archetypes. The main archetype that I have been able to compare from the two sources is Answering the Call. When Michael Corleone first enters the movie, he states that what the Dom and the rest of his family is doing is them and that he has no part in it and that is when he is refusing the Call. When his father is shot and sees how much he is needed he changes his outlook on what his family is doing and he answers the call and steps up into the role that his family needs him in. This change that he makes is an expression of characterization and when he is characterized in this way, his brothers, Sonny and Tom Hagen, are used as foils to show how much and in what ways he is changing.

In the short amount of the film that we have seen, it is hard to make a certain judgment on some of the characters because they have still been weak characters so far. Michael Corleone has been a weaker and not till of late and when his father was show has he really been a factor in anything that his family does. One of the character archetypes that I see Michael represents in Young Man from the Provinces. He returns home and claims that he is not his heritage and he when he sees all of the problems that have currently erupted with his family, his father being shot and Luca Brasi being killed, his has no choice but to become a part of it. He has a different outlook on the problems than Sonny and Tom Hagen have. The problems that have been seen before are solved in a different way with the addition of Michael.