摘要

《教父》是当今最富盛名的黑手党小说。马里奥蒲佐用他细腻的笔触，探讨了意大利移民在追求美国梦中的荣耀和失败。国内学者对于《教父》的研究不少，但关于文化冲突方面的研究几乎是空白，作者通过对教父中的重要人物和事件进行分析，发现《教父》不仅仅改变了意大利移民的自我认知，也影响了美国人对移民文化的态度。本文尝试解读在这些文化冲突背后的原因。 

关键词：《教父》; 文化冲击; 意大利移民

Abstract

    The godfather is the most popular mafia novel in the world. What Mario Puzo, delivered brilliantly was nothing less than a disquisition on the glory and failure of the American dream of all Italian-Americans. Researchers published many papers about this novel, but none of them related it with the culture shock. In this paper, by analyzing the story and characters, the author believes that The Godfather not only changed Italian-Americans’self-recognition, but influenced the way the American’s attitude towards immigrants’culture. the article tries to find out why the culture shock situation happened.

Key words: The godfather;the culture shock;The Italian-Americans

1. Introduction
1.1 Mario Puzo
    Mario Giuliani Puzo (October 15, 1920 – July 2, 1999) was an Italian American author and screenwriter, known for his novels about the Mafia, especially The Godfather (1969), Puzo was born into a poor family from Pietradefusi in Italy, living in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York(Homberger, Eric,1999). Many of his books draw heavily on this heritage. At the age of 35, Puzo published his first book, Dark arena. From 1963 on Puzo worked as a free lance journalist and writer. He published book reviews, stories, and articles in such journals as Redbook, Holiday, Book World, and the New York Times. His second novel, Fortunate Pilgrim followed one family of Italian immigrants from the late 1920s through World War II. Neither of Puzo's first two books gained financial success, though both received good reviews.