Al Capone

15 Pages 3767 Words

The name Capone itself sends mixed emotion through the mind of the average American but is a name unknown to very few. Some might smile at the thought of the man that ran Chicago with the FBI nipping at his heels like poodles and booming like a robber baron on illegal enterprise while others may shudder at the thought of the death and pain caused at the snap of fingers by the tyrant they called “Scarface”. Much is known and even more is speculated about the lavish life of a consummate professional in the business of bootlegging, brothels, gambling and numbers or the all out turmoil known as Chicago night life but stratospheres of space are left for speculation as proven by Frank Wilson and Elliot Ness. Capone started his life as a promising B student from a caring family but slowly took a grizzly metamorphosis into a hardened villain, hustler, and murderer in a city that honored and celebrated a gangster funeral like a Macy’s Day Parade. The following chronicles the life of the most notable gangster in modern day history through his attempts at moral and honest living and his lapses into criminal activity that even he preferred to avoid and then writes him off into sweet, syphilis-ridden dreams.
Alphonse Capone was the first son born and conceived on American soil of Gabriele and Teresina Capone, also incorrectly thought to have been known by the surname Caponi (Bardsley-1). Gabriele came to America with full understanding of literacy and bookkeeping after having run a barbershop in Italy, which aided him in his attempts at successful and, most of important of all, honest business in the “New World”. Laurence Bergreen describes the family saying, “Nothing about the Capone family was inherently disturbed, violent, or dishonest. The children and the parents were close; there was no apparent mental disability, no traumatic event that sent the boys hurtling into a life of crime.”(Bergreen-2). The family began their stru...