The Godfather describes the existential conflict between two sets of values partially constituting competing prescriptive and descriptive visions of the world: a nineteenth-century Sicilian perspective grounded in honor and the accumulation of power within a culturally specific family order, and a twentieth-century American perspective celebrating individualism and commercial success. The two sets of values coalesce uneasily in the same cultural setting and their conflict is irresolvable. Ultimately, the Sicilian perspective must wither away in the United States because, unlike the old country, the new world lacks its sustaining cultural conditions. This reading interprets The Godfather as, among other things, a commentary on the transformation of personal identity within the Sicilian and Italian immigrant experience. As such, this chapter provides the foundation for understanding The Godfather as showcasing the existential incompatibility of nineteenth-century Sicilian patriarchal values and twentieth-century American culture. An honor code discordant with its cultural context is highly vulnerable.