Summary Of Al Capone's Scarface

Back in the late 1920’s when all alcohol was illegal, a man name Al Capone or “Scarface” formed a mob in Chicago that brewed and distributed large amounts of alcohol all around the United States. Eliot Ness and the rest of his police force estimated that Capone’s mob was making over one and a half million dollars a week! That is more than seventy five million dollars per year! Eliot knew that Capone’s mob had gotten out of hand and something had to be done about it. He formed a team of elite, non-corrupt policemen that were fit for the job to take down the mob. Eliot and his team worked together day and night taking down breweries, only to find that this job would be much more difficult than they expected. In many ways, I can connect the events

in Eliot Nesses life to the events in my life and to the events around the world. I have many thoughts about what will happen to the mob as Eliot nears in on them, which I will predict about in my second body paragraph. Considering the book is written in the mid 1900’s, I have many questions, which I will address and give possible answers to based on evidence I have found.
The uphill battle portrayed in this book is something I can connect with very well in both my life, and events that have happen in the modern era. One way I can connect to the book is that both Eliot Ness and I have had doubt. After Eliot assembled his team, he came to a chilling realization and said, “Doubts raced through my mind as I considered the feasibility of enforcing a law which the majority of honest citizens didn’t seem to want.” (Ness 39) Basically he is realizing that this case against Capone is in a way like the David vs. Goliath story. I can especially connect my life to that situation through my sports. In my second year of cross-country, I was at the bottom of junior high. As I worked hard throughout the year, I was able to make my way up to varsity and receive a letter. I had many doubts during the season especially when I didn’t perform how I wanted to. As Eliot and his team works day and night on the case, they too make many progressions that they never thought they would be able to do, such as confiscating hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment, and finally arresting members of Capone’s mob. There are struggles and doubts in events that happen every day, but one type of event that I can especially connect with book is natural disasters. When a natural disaster hits, lots of people are tentative about what will happen next. They are forced to work together and show fortitude as they try and fix the situation. The same is to be said about Eliot Ness and his crew. If they don’t work together on the case, Capone will continue to augment his reign on the city of Chicago. Immediately after a natural disaster hits, the situation looks dour, but as you keep working as a team to fix what happened, suddenly there is a glimpse of hope. After Eliot and his team raided their first brewery, they saw this glimpse of hope. Ever since that glimpse of hope, Eliot and his team have gotten nearer and nearer to taking down Capone’s mob. But Capone isn’t the kind of man that lets you take something of his without a consequence, which makes me wonder, what will he do to fight back?
One prediction I have is that Capone’s mob will try and kill Eliot Ness or one of his team members.

Now that Eliot has started to actually put a dent in Capone’s empire, Capone is figuring who Eliot’s team is and wants revenge. The start of the book foreshadows that someone from Eliot’s team might die when Eliot stated “Because, starting tomorrow, there wouldn’t be a day or night until we broke Al Capone when I’d be able to cease worrying about the men I was about to place in constant danger.”(Ness 46) Almost every time Eliot and his team raid a brewery, someone inside is armed with a gun. The fact that Capone’s mob members are armed with guns probably means they are intending on using them when they have to. Even at the start, Eliot sniffs a whiff of death after a member of Capone’s mob attempted slashing him with a knife. Once Eliot starts realizing that the mob might be after him and his team, he hires someone he calls “the kid” to get information on the inside of the mob so he would know their each and every move. In order for this to work, Eliot has the kid give Capone’s mob information about his team so the mob thinks that the kid is working for them, when really while he is there, he gets information about them and reports it back to Eliot. Eliot Ness is both the main character in the book, and the author of the story which triggers lots of questions in my mind for

him.
The question I wonder the most is why did Eliot Ness write the book? It is obviously a major event in United States history, but I wonder why he didn’t have someone else write the book considering he is just a police officer. One possible answer to my question is maybe he wanted it to be written exactly how it happened. Since Eliot wrote it, you get the feel of authenticity and it makes the story feel truer. It is also all from his point of view, which makes the reader feel more as if they are in the author’s shoes. Another possible reason I think that he decided to write the novel is because of how attached he was to the case. He worked so hard to get the operation approved and spent endless hours researching different people who would fit the job, you could tell how much this case meant to him. When Eliot first found out that he was going to be able to lead the case he stated, “I sat there gaping, my mind in a whirl, and Jonson chuckled as he opened a desk drawer and took out a cardboard folder. I was so stunned I hardly heard his voice as he took several papers from the envelope.” (Ness 22) He probably also knew many details about the case that other writers would miss, which almost made him liable to write the novel.
In my eyes, the overall theme of the book so far was to show that you can overcome obstacles even when the odds are against you. I connected to the theme by relating the book to the sport I am in and also to natural disasters. Based on the theme I was also able to predict that someone is going to die, and finally I questioned why Eliot Ness decided to write the book. Considering I was able to meet all the bullet points on the checklist and was very detailed in supporting the points I made in my body paragraphs, I would give myself a 9 out of 10.