World War II

World War II is a decisive historical backdrop to the novel’s account of postwar Italy: its privations drive Guido from Positano to Naples as a child, while the liberation and reconstruction that follow help restore the criminal order in which he rises. The war also links Creasy and Bruno through their separate experiences as soldiers.

Guido’s childhood in wartime

In 1945, Creasy’s arrival and a boy’s curiosity prompt Guido to remember his childhood. He was eleven, his father had died in North Africa, and his six-year-old brother, Elio, was hungry alongside him. Their mother answered catastrophe with prayer in the church at Positano, but Guido did not share her faith. Knowing that American troops in Naples meant access to food, he walked the fifty kilometers there.

Guido survived by scavenging, begging, and stealing. He studied the Americans’ habits and learned when drink made them generous and when sexual distraction made them vulnerable to theft. Once a week he returned along the coast road to Positano carrying chocolate, money, and tins of meat for his family. His mother’s prayers continued, but Guido’s practical response to hunger was what kept Elio fed.

Liberation and the postwar order

The narrative presents liberation as a turning point with a double consequence: the Americans freed the city and released prisoners, including both innocents and criminals. Under the Fascist and German regimes, even powerful criminal organizations had been suppressed; with the return of justice came the return of crime. The novel describes the two as re-entering Italy together rather than as opposing forces cleanly separated by liberation.

By the early 1950s, the organization had reassembled itself. The bosses controlled prostitution, assigned districts, and took percentages; as Marshall Aid supported reconstruction and restaurants, shops, taxis, and landlords returned to profit, criminal leaders collected payment for protecting businesses. Guido’s adolescent gang fitted into this revived structure, and he was recognized as a promising young figure. The war’s aftermath thus becomes more than a period of recovery: it is also the setting in which Guido’s survival skills and calculated violence acquire an institutional place.

A shared identity as old soldiers

The war appears again in a later exchange between Creasy and Bruno. Bruno tells Creasy that he served in the army during the war and was captured by Montgomery in North Africa. Creasy acknowledges the disclosure briefly; when Bruno observes that Creasy’s service in the Legion makes them both old soldiers, Creasy looks up and shows a trace of a smile. The small recognition connects them through military experience without erasing the difference between Guido’s childhood struggle for food and the adults’ memories of service and capture.