Tragic Devotion

Paper Summary:

This paper reviews the film 'Road to Perdition', meaning eternal damnation. The author asks how the title of the film relates to the characters and themes, and wonders whether it is a portent of things to come in the movie. Set in the late 1920s in Chicago, the film is about Michael Sullivan, whose wife and younger son were murdered by the biological child of the man who raised him after his own parents were killed. That man, John Rooney, was a gangster, and his mafia connections embolden his son, Conner. Yet, as the paper points out, the match-up between Conner and Michael is balanced, because Michael is more clever and cunning than the mafioso. The paper focuses its analysis on the theme of revenge as it relates to both men.

From the Paper:

"This slaying of his family gives Michael Sullivan strong ambition to seek revenge against Conner Rooney for the acts he has committed. The second convention of a revenge tragedy is also already apparent to the viewer. That convention is that the protagonist has justification (to the viewer's satisfaction) for seeking revenge. Sullivan quickly finds out that if he is to do so, he will be opposing the might of the mafia as well as the man that raised him...John Rooney. This raises a strong moral dilemma in the movie as by killing Conner Rooney, he is betraying his emotional father John Rooney. Will he seek revenge and slay the murder of his family while in the process breaking the relationship with the man that raised him and risking his own life? Or will he move on with his life still living under the protection of the mafia? Michael decides to go all the way and avenge his family's death, as he doesn't want his son following in his footsteps of organized crime."

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