Al Capone

15 Pages 3628 Words

The name Capone 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 ran Chicago with the FBI nipping at his heels and booming like a robber baron in 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. The clandestine activities of Capone leave stratospheres of space 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 went through 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 a moral and honest living and his lapses into criminal activity 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,1998). Gabriele came to America literate and as a bookkeeper after having run a barbershop in Italy. This aided him in his attempts at running a 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”(cited in Bardsley,1998). The family began their struggle to adv...