3 Lessons in Overcoming Crucibles from Two Characters That Didn’t Overcome Theirs

3 Lessons in Overcoming Crucibles from Two Characters That Didn’t Overcome Theirs

Gary Schneeberger

July 26, 2024

Since we debuted the Beyond the Crucible podcast on Dec. 5, 2019, we have interviewed 124 guests with vastly different stories about what their worst days were, and how they journeyed from trials to triumphs in the wake of them. Some of our guests experienced physical crucibles, some emotional trauma, some substance-abuse problems, others reversals of professional fortune.

Those guests have been men and women. They have represented different races and ethnicities, socioeconomic statuses and demographic profiles. Yet despite this rich diversity, they all had one thing in common: They learned lessons from their setbacks and failures that helped them to cast new visions that have allowed them to live lives of fulfilling and joyous significance. But then we launched our current series.

In Classic Films, Classic Crucible Lessons – a look at what we can learn about overcoming trauma and tragedy from some of the American Film Institute’s Top 100 films – we have traversed ground we never explored before: the lessons we can learn about overcoming crucibles from people who failed to overcome theirs.

Not actual people, of course, but fictional characters in some of the films we’ve discussed. In the midst of recording the first two episodes of the series, on Citizen Kane and The Godfather, Warwick and I realized the protagonists of those movies – Charles Foster Kane and Michael Corleone – had never come to the realization that their crucibles didn’t happen to them, but for them. Their inability, or disinterest, or a bit of both, to move beyond their crucibles in healthy ways destroyed them.

If you caught the first two episodes of the series on those two films, you know the stories are tragic. But they are also, as we mentioned, cautionary tales. And the upside of a cautionary tale is that we – the ones who hear and see those tales – can gain insight and perspective from the details of those that the ones the stories are about never do. That’s precisely what happened in our examinations of Citizen Kane and The Godfather.

Here are three takeaways from those movies that can keep us from succumbing to the same fate Kane and Corleone did.

1. Don’t settle for success but commit to significance. Both Kane and Corleone became wealthy men – in Kane’s case, one of the richest in the world. They could buy anything they wanted – Kane building himself a grand home, Xanadu, referred to in the movie as a “pleasure palace”; Corleone buying the casinos and other criminal enterprises out from under his mob rivals.

But all their financial abundance proved no match for the lack of happiness in their lives. Kane destroyed both of his marriages, longed for respect that he never received; Corleone grew more hard-hearted as his wealth and power also grew. Kane at least recognized his limitations even though he did nothing to curtail them, admitting in the middle of the film that “if I hadn’t been very rich, I might have been a really great man.” So, Kane died longing for the simpler times of his childhood — his final word, Rosebud, revealed at the end of the film to be the name of the sled he played with as a boy from a family of meager means. Corleone could never rest, his ruthlessness to those who competed with his crime family leading to his ordering the killing of his brother-in-law and lying to his wife about it – the movie ending on him shutting her out of his office when one of his henchmen closes the door on her as she looks in. It’s symbolic of the way all that he had led to all that he couldn’t have. Success stunted both men’s shot at significance.

2.The values by which we live our lives post-crucibles must be rooted in a set of unchanging morals and values. Both Kane and Corleone are not just me-first characters, but me-only ones. Kane’s best friend. Jedidiah Leland, remarks to a film crew researching Kane’s last words that his friend “never believed in anything except Charlie Kane. He never had a conviction except Charlie Kane in his life. I suppose he died without one. That must have been pretty unpleasant.”

The only code that governed Corleone’s life was the mafia code of omerta – the inviolable commitment to silence about the “family business” expected of all who were in it. A running theme in The Godfather is that violent acts against other mob families aren’t personal, but strictly business. Growing up in such an environment, even though as the youngest son of the godfather who only became the don himself because of a failed attempt on his father’s life and a successful one on his brother’s, Michael’s initial amorality and eventual immorality were hardwired into him. Like Kane, he did not have the moral fiber to move beyond his crucibles.

3. Beware stubbornness and where it can lead you. Kane was seemingly on his way to capturing his dream of being elected governor of New York when the crooked incumbent, Jim Geddes, confronted him with evidence he threatened to give to the press that Kane was cheating on his first wife. Geddes gave Kane the chance to drop out of the race, and he’d keep the affair quiet. But Kane’s stubbornness and hubris wouldn’t allow him to stand down. He didn’t just lose his wife, and the election, but he lost significant standing with the public whose adoration he craved.

Corleone was equally stubborn in his attempt to shift the family mafia business from New York to Las Vegas by strong arming casino owner Moe Green. Green chided him for thinking he had to power to cast him aside, saying he had talked to the Corleone family’s rivals about selling the casino to them, but Michael was undeterred. He not only took over Green’s gambling house, but also had him murdered – along with the heads of the other mafia families. Michael’s descent into such savagery stripped him of whatever soul he had left. By the end of the trilogy of Godfather films, he would die alone.

In both of the examples cited above – indeed, in many instances – stubbornness can exacerbate our weaknesses. That is certainly the case with Kane and Corleone – their stubbornness only made their hubris and lack of values more corrosive. Being stubborn makes it hard to move beyond our crucibles because it makes it easy to stay where we are.

If Charles Foster Kane and Michael Corleone were real people, they would never be guests featured on the Beyond the Crucible podcast. But their mistakes in how they lived their lives in the wake of their crucibles can, indeed, help us avoid making those same mistakes ourselves.