Goodfellas and Wise GuysHenry Hill, Tommy DeVito, and Jimmy Conway are three men who are products of their environments. The crowd fulfilled a central role in each of his personalities. For Tommy, it was a place where he could feed his ego and his masculinity complex. For Henry, a goal; a way for him to provide for his family and his “family”. Ultimately though, the way they held the crowd in such high regard began to deteriorate throughout the course of the plot. Tommy violated the most important rule of the mob by killing Billy Batts; Henry and Jimmy went behind the crowd to sell cocaine. Both Jimmy and Henry display gradually increasing levels of paranoia throughout the film Goodfellas. Jimmy's paranoia existed after the robbery; he slowly killed all partners in order to protect himself from their potential betrayals or mistakes. At one point, Henry even suspects Jimmy of trying to kill him and Karen, two longtime friends, because he feared Jimmy would report him to the police. However, given their two professions, it's almost inevitable that the trio will end up dead or in prison. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayLiving “unjustly” means you can never truly relax; you face existential threats from all sides. The feds were still harassing Karen and the rest of the mob wives with search warrants when they were looking for bribes. There was always the threat of ambitious subordinates and selfish superiors who demanded respect and homage. You must therefore always be vigilant to never make a mistake. Ironically, Henry laments to Karen that he "isn't as stupid as some of the other gangsters" and that he will never get caught. However, throughout the film we see two important things happen to Henry. First, his ego only inflates; he thinks he's big enough to sell cocaine on the side without the mob's knowledge and protection, which ultimately leads to him getting arrested. He, Tommy, and Jimmy have started to adopt this "I'm invincible" mentality now that they're high up in the mafia; they believe that no matter what, they are too important for the mob to eliminate them like they did so many others. This mentality leads them to become careless and ultimately make mistakes; Tommy killed a mob boss and a young child, Jimmy and Henry felt above the mob rules and got caught for it. The other thing that started to happen to Henry was that these mistakes started to lead to paranoia. You can see this after Tommy kills Billy Batts; Henry is unable to concentrate on the conversation while Tommy and Jimmy have a late dinner with Tommy's mother as if there isn't a dying man in the trunk of their car. This paranoia only gets worse when Henry starts using the cocaine he was selling. And it is this paranoid behavior brought on by an inflated ego that ultimately costs Henry his life in the mob. He gets arrested, kicked out of the crowd and is forced to denounce his family to protect himself. It was the psychological pressure that made him break, pressure caused by not respecting the "ground rules" of the crowd and by the realization that he was too involved and that there was no crowd to protect him from his own mistakes..