Kay Adams Character Analysis

Kay is Michael Corleone’s long-term girlfriend and eventual wife, as well as the mother of his children. Born in New Hampshire to a Baptist minister (Mr. Adams) and a homemaker (Mrs. Adams), Kay meets Michael at Dartmouth University in 1945, where she is studying education, and soon becomes his girlfriend. As a non-Italian woman, Kay represents the life away from his Sicilian-American heritage that Michael initially wishes to lead. Kay is intelligent, well educated, and independent. She first appears in the novel as Michael’s guest at Connie’s wedding, where she learns about the Corleone Family business. Kay and Michael are sexually active long before their marriage, and they carry out this affair in New York hotels to avoid conflicting with their families’ respective taboos against premarital sex. Michael and Kay separate temporarily after Michael flees to Sicily after he murders Sollozzo and McCluskey. During this period, Kay graduates from Dartmouth and takes a job as an elementary school teacher. She also develops a friendly relationship with Mama Corleone, who urges her to let Michael go. Kay reunites with Michael, however, when he returns to America. She initially resents him for vanishing from her life, but she becomes further drawn into his Mafia world after their marriage and the birth of their children. Due to her gender and her status as a non-Italian, Kay cannot have any role in the Corleone’s criminal operations, which Michael explicitly keeps secret from her. She therefore represents the view of outsiders who can occasionally peer into the Mafia’s secretive subculture, but only so far before they are pushed away.