Gang life is far less romantic than people imagine; it is filled with submission and betrayal. Of course, Enzo didn’t choose it of his own free will either—he was gradually pushed onto that path by the rules of his hometown, the pressure of poverty, and the name of “family.” In moments like these, the question isn’t even “Should I join?” but rather, “If I don’t, can I still survive?”Yet even in an environment like this, Enzo comes to understand something that feels almost stubbornly human: “We do not always get to choose what we do, but we can choose who we are.” That realization stayed with me long after I put the game down, because it speaks to something real: life doesn’t always give us the freedom to choose our circumstances, but it still asks us to choose our character.
From a young age, Enzo was a carusu, raised in the dust and harsh rules of Sicily’s sulfur mines. When he stood up for a friend and ended up offending the foreman—and the cruelty of the owners behind him—trouble fell on him almost immediately, not because he “chose the wrong path,” but because that world simply had no room for defiance. After escaping the mine, he was taken in by the Torrisi family by sheer chance: on the surface, it was a way out, but in truth it was simply another, more finely tuned order. That was how Enzo moved from being the oppressed to becoming someone “useful,” and under Don Torrisi’s approval he swore an oath of loyalty—joining the Mafia not out of romance, but as a forced turn taken between survival and its price, one he could never truly undo.
Enzo doesn’t get to choose—he is pushed forward by his origins, poverty, and the rules of his hometown. Isabela doesn’t get to choose either—even though she appears to have status and resources, she is still bound by family arrangements, public expectations, and responsibility; so many things are not a matter of “Do I want to?” but “I must.” One is forced by survival at the bottom, the other constrained by order at the top. Different circumstances, yet they share the same helplessness: life doesn’t always offer us a choice.
In contrast, Cesare also has no say in the circumstances of his birth; he, too, grows up shaped by the same rules of his homeland and the shadow of the family. The difference is this: when fate brings him to a crossroads, he treats “having no choice” as a pass to do whatever is necessary, and turns power and control into his only sense of safety. He chooses to solve problems in a colder, faster, more absolute way—turning people into chips, loyalty into a tool, and fear into order. So even though both men are swept along by the same forces, Enzo struggles to hold on to some kind of bottom line, while Cesare learns to embrace the darkness on purpose—not because he has more choices, but because he chooses to become a different kind of person. Cesare chooses to live by the family’s oath: “My flesh must burn like this saint if I do not keep my oath.”
When I was younger, I watched In the Name of the People, and back then I believed Qi Tongwei’s suffering was simply fate at work: his background, his chances, his environment, and the rules of the game pushed him little by little to the edge, until in the end he was merely making the most “realistic” choice in the cracks. But as I grew older and looked at it again, I began to realize that “fate” is often just a word we use to explain pressure. It can determine what a person goes through, but it doesn’t necessarily determine who that person becomes. Qi Tongwei’s greed and coldness were, ultimately, choices of his own. Yes, reality shoved him forward and injustice provoked him—but what mattered more was that, choice after choice, he turned “proving himself” into “I must win,” “changing his fate” into “trading away principles,” and “climbing upward” into “whatever it takes.” Once a bottom line is surrendered again and again, compromise gets dressed up as something reasonable, until he is no longer only a victim, but also a defender and an enforcer of the very rules he once hated. What truly separates people is often not their circumstances, but what they manage to hold onto—and what they decide to give up—while trapped inside them.
Therefore, the same is true in our own lives: what we have to do is not always up to us—we are pushed by circumstances, pulled by responsibilities, and pressured by reality. But after we have lived through setbacks, injustice, temptation, and disappointment, we can still come to a clearer understanding of one thing: what we truly hold in our hands is who we choose to be. Even when our situation won’t let us choose the road, we can still choose our principles and our posture; and when a real choice finally does appear, we can still keep our inner kindness and integrity—refusing to surrender ourselves to coldness, and refusing to let the world grind us into someone else.
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