Naqam: נָקָם (Vengeance)

I want to share an excerpt from Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather, but first, I need to provide some context. An Italian-American named Amerigo Bonasera has come, as have many others, to the home of Don Corleone, the Godfather, on the day of Corleone’s daughter’s marriage. Bonasera, like many of the others who have come to Corleone’s home, has come to ask a favor. Bonasera’s young daughter is in the hospital. Her eyes have been blackened, her nose is broken, and her fractured jaw is wired together. Two young men brutally beat her for refusing their sexual advances.

Bonasera has tried to live as a good American and consistently avoided contact with Corleone, a Mafia Boss. Following the vicious attack on his daughter, Bonasera pursued a legal case against the men who committed the crime. The men were arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to three years in prison. However, the judge, taking into account that they have clean records and noting that they come from good families, suspends their prison sentence. The two men go free. So, Bonasera has come to the Godfather to ask for his help in avenging the assault against his daughter. At the time of making his request, he is not alone with Don Corleone. So as not to be heard by the other men in the room, he whispers his request in the Don’s ear. Here is Puzo’s description.

Bonasera hesitated, then bent down and put his lips so close to the Don’s hairy ear that they touched. Don Corleone listened like a priest in the confessional, gazing away into the distance, impassive, remote. They stood so for a long moment until Bonasera finished whispering and straightened to his full height. The Don looked up gravely at Bonasera. Bonasera, his face flushed, returned the stare unflinchingly. Finally the Don spoke. “That I cannot do. You are being carried away.”

Puzo, Mario. The Godfather: 50th Anniversary Edition (p. 22). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

What is it that the Don cannot do? 

Don Corleone said curtly, “The court gave you justice.” Bonasera shook his head stubbornly. “No. They gave the youths justice. They did not give me justice.” The Don acknowledged this fine distinction with an approving nod, then asked, “What is your justice?” “An eye for an eye,” Bonasera said. “You asked for more,” the Don said. “Your daughter is alive.” Bonasera said reluctantly, “Let them suffer as she suffers.”

Puzo, Mario, ibid (p. 23). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

I want to pause here and make a few comments. First, let’s be clear. Bonasera has asked the Don to have the two young men murdered. At this point, the Don asks a searching question: “What is your justice?” Bonasera responds by quoting the statement of a law found in several places in the Hebrew Bible. Here is how it is stated in one of them, the Book of Leviticus 24:19-20:

“And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be rendered unto him.”

Many people criticize this approach to justice by claiming it reflects the cruelty or harshness of the Hebrew Bible’s justice. That is not its purpose, however. Its purpose is simple: to ensure that the punishment fits the crime. Corleone draws attention to the disproportion between Bonasera’s request of what he wants to be done to the two boys and what was done to his daughter. “Your daughter is alive,” he reminds Bonasera. In other words, the punishment you have requested does not fit the crime. Bonasera accepts the Don’s amendment of his request. 

When the Don assigns the work to be done, he makes a statement about the nature of the work that goes to the root of the problem of exacting vengeance to achieve justice. Before discussing it, I want to move from a fictional example to a real-world one: a tale of a 19th-century feud between two American families, the Hatfields and the McCoys.

Many of our deepest, darkest, and most dangerous familial and societal divisions are rooted in political disagreements. The American Civil War resulted in neighbors fighting neighbors and even in brothers fighting brothers. Many of the states that bordered states remaining loyal to the Union and states siding with the Confederacy were conflicted. While Virginia seceded from the Union, divisions among its citizens in the western part of the state led to the creation of the state of West Virginia in 1863. West Virginia sided with the Union. The Hatfield family lived in West Virginia, but their sympathies were with the Confederacy, and their men fought for the Confederacy. To the west of Virginia was the state of Kentucky. It took a while, but eventually, Kentucky came out in support of the Union. 

The McCoys lived in Kentucky. Two of the three McCoy brothers fought for the Confederacy, but the youngest brother, Asa, served the Union. He was murdered in 1863. The murderer has not been definitively identified, but it is believed by many to have been Jim Vance, a relative of the Hatfields. Thus began a bloody series of reprisals and counter-reprisals that lasted for twenty-eight years. And it wasn’t stopped voluntarily by the families. State and local governments intervened to end the cycle of violence in 1891.

The feud between the Hatfields and McCoys has become an American legend, with heroes and villains and even forbidden romance like the one in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. But to me, there is nothing romantic in the tragic tale of violence and hatred between two families. It serves as the perfect example of how violence breeds violence; the thirst for vengeance and revenge, sometimes carried out under the banner of Justice, spirals wildly out of control and becomes an end in itself.

Don Corleone recognizes the power of violence and the lust for blood. He acknowledges this even in the absence of a motive for revenge. We see this in a warning he gives concerning the selection of the men to deliver Bonasera’s justice, to avenge the wrong done to him and his family. Note: The reference to “corpse valet” refers to Bonasera’s occupation; he is an undertaker. The Don says:

“Give this affair to Clemenza and tell him to be sure to use reliable people, people who will not be carried away by the smell of blood. After all, we’re not murderers, no matter what that corpse valet dreams up in his foolish head.”

Puzo, Mario, ibid (p. 24).

And this is the challenge: not to be carried away by the smell of blood. This possibility is why governments make laws to punish their citizens who attempt to take the law into their own hands, why governments reserve the right to exact vengeance and distribute justice to themselves, and why international cooperation is required to constantly be vigilant in monitoring wars within and between nations, in perpetually engaging in an effort to prevent countries and their warriors from being carried away by the smell of blood.

All the best,
Gershon

P.S. This is a revised version of the blog originally published August 15, 2024.