Little Caesar :: Historical Narrative Italy Papers

Little Caesar in short before noon on a Wednesday in October, 1894, the clients of a small-town Italian groomshop leisurely undergo the ritual of shaving. A group sit on the side wall and trade observations in phlegmatic, Neapolitan dialect, while the champion in the barbers chair listens. Occasionally, between strokes of the razor through thick stubble, the barber adds his opinion to the conversation. A pair of young children regularly chase separately other through the shop and are peremptorily ordered lynchpin show up. A young man rushes in off the street and declares himself, slimly unnecessarily, to be in a hurry. The older hands are static for a moment and share disapproving and curious glances while he climbs into the chair and the barber begins to lather his face. With hazel eyes and sharp features, 22-year-old Giuseppe Zambarano stands out in a gathering of swarthy peasant stock. His closely mown moustache and neat hair already appear well-groomed, his overall a ppearance verges on fastidious. He announces to the barbershop audience that he is getting engaged today. He will receive his betrothed and her family at two oclock in his fathers house. The men offer formal compliments to young Giuseppe on his engagement, and perhaps approximately patronizing words of wisdom Moglie e buoi dei paesi tuoi Take wife and kine from your own village. The men in the barbershop know that Giuseppes future in-laws, want roughly of them, come from the same triangle of villages in the back-country of Campania. Fontegreca, Ciorlano, and Prata Sannita lie two rough miles. walk from the last station on the Naples line. Now many of the tubby cottages there stand empty. Most of the one thousand or so natives of these villages make their homes a short way from the terminal of the Cranston St. trolley car, in Thornton, Rhode Is bring, on farm land that resembles the fertile hills of the old country, with island-dotted Narragansett Bay like a reflection of Naple s in the background.* * *As a yet exclusive youngest son, Giuseppe Zambarano lives in the home of his father Gioacchino and his uncle Lorenzo, a modest wooden familiarity in the heart of this growing neighborhood. The Zambarano brothers of the older generation disembarked in 1882 to total the so-called pick and shovel brigade of new immigrants, who tilled the land in Thornton and Simmonsville, as they had in Italy.Now many of the early arrivals nurture become disenchanted with the hard conditions and meager returns of family farming that drove them from the Italian countryside in the first place.