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Catch-22 (Paperback)
by Joseph Heller
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Brilliantly written and fiirst published in 1961, Catch-22 is a timeless classic satire on the murderous insanity of war. |
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Author: Joseph Heller
Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition
Pub. in: September, 1996
ISBN: 0684833395
Pages: 464
Measurements: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00460
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- MSL Picks -
Unlike most books about World War II, Catch-22 does not attempt to describe specific battles and provide insight in the course of a war. Rather, it deals with the human interactions that are a part of war. Catch-22 is more than just a war novel, it is a novel about why people act the way they do when put into certain situations.
One of the most dominant themes in Catch-22 is that of insanity. In almost every chapter of the book there are examples of people using insane argumentation to make logical points. Catch-22 takes a look at the way people form so-called reasonable assumptions and proves how everyone, it seems, is crazy in their own way.
In the very beginning of the book, Yossarian travels to the hospital and meets the army Clergyman. Once he decides that the man is not insane, Yossarian warns him that insanity is contagious, and, indeed, by the end of the book it seems that Yossarian is correct. By the second chapter, Yossarian has determined that war itself is madness. Men fight and die for a crazy notion of patriotism and that doesn't seem to bother anyone. Yossarian's friends think he is crazy because he recognizes the insanity around him, however Yossarian realizes that it is this awareness that will ultimately save his life. Because Yossarian knows he is in constant danger because of those surrounding him, he is prepared to defend himself against anything at any moment.
The presence of the Catch-22 itself is a prime example of insanity in the book. It employs insanity to come to an insane conclusion, yet on the surface appears to be a logical chain of reasoning. Even doctors in the book are figures of madness. Yossarian is evaluated by a psychiatrist who determines that he is insane, however, because Yossarian went to the doctor under a different name, the doctor sends a different soldier home even though he knows that person is not the one he diagnosed as crazy.
Another example of irrational circular logic occurs when Yossarian proposes to Luciana. Luciana refuses to marry Yossarian because she believes he is insane. She thinks he's insane because he wants to marry her. Luciana tells Yossarian he is crazy, yet she justifies this belief with irrational thinking, proving herself delusional.
Perhaps the best irony of the book however, is that Orr, supposedly the craziest of all the men, ends up being the sanest. In the beginning, Orr tells irrational stories and walks around with strange objects in his mouth. He does this so if anyone ever asks him why he has a certain object in his mouth, he can say that he doesn't have that thing in his mouth and pull out something else. He is, of course, utterly sensible in this belief. Orr is also, however, believed to be the luckiest man in the unit, because he is always crashing his plane and making it out alive. In the last chapter of the book, Orr crashes his plane in the ocean and disappears. Yossarian is at first shocked by this news, then stunned, as he realizes that Orr was not actually crazy. Rather, Orr feigned insanity in order to disguise his escape plans. The last time he crashes, Orr went to Sweden instead of simply dying like everyone thought. In the end, Orr used his insanity as his cover, and as his ticket to freedom.
In a nut-shell, Catch-22 is the epitome of military satire, but Heller doesn't let his choice of setting limit himself. Nothing is safe against ridicule: society, bureaucracy, and humans themselves all fall prey to his dark wit. Still, for all his jabbings in the ribs of life, his humor usually stays well away from being tasteless. If you do throw Catch-22 down in disgust, it's probably because you just realized how incompetent man really is. In that way, his style is somewhat similar to Douglas Adams, though more subtle and less quirky. Heller's sense of humor may be so subtle, in fact, that readers more used to conventional and obvious humor may completely miss some of the implied jokes. Mixed in with the biting comedy are ideas that really make the reader think: "You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age?" (Heller, 48) At times it seems like Heller is softening the reader up with humor just so he can blindside them with a ponderous thought.
Despite its age, Catch-22 is a surprising accessible read. It's hardly a book for young adults; Heller obviously wrote his most famous work for a very adult audience. There is some rough language and adult themes. Some readers may be intimidated by its length, but aside from a few sluggish parts, the book can get rather exciting.
Readers with a bit of patience and an open mind will probably enjoy this novel. Heller will make you laugh, cry, and possibly rethink your outlook on life. Even before you turn the last page, you will understand why Catch-22 has earned its influential place in literature history.
Target readers:
General readers
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Joseph Heller lives with his wife in East Hampton, New York. He is also the author of Closing Time and other novels.
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From the Pubilisher:
Catch-22 is like no other novel. It is one of the funniest books ever written, a keystone work in American literature, and even added a new term to the dictionary.
At the heart of Catch-22 resides the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero endlessly inventive in his schemes to save his skin from the horrible chances of war. His efforts are perfectly understandable because as he furiously scrambles, thousands of people he hasn't even met are trying to kill him. His problem is Colonel Cathcart, who keeps raising the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions that he is committed to flying, he is trapped by the Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, the hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule from which the book takes its title: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes the necessary formal request to be relieved of such missions, the very act of making the request proves that he is sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.
Catch-22 is a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as it might look to some one dangerously sane - a masterpiece of our time.
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Chapter 1: The Texan
It was love at first sight.
The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.
Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice. The doctors were puzzled by the fact that it wasn't quite jaundice. If it became jaundice they could treat it. If it didn't become jaundice and went away they could discharge him. But this just being short of jaundice all the time confused them.
Each morning they came around, three brisk and serious men with efficient mouths and inefficient eyes, accompanied by brisk and serious Nurse Duckett, one of the ward nurses who didn't like Yossarian. They read the chart at the foot of the bed and asked impatiently about the pain. They seemed irritated when he told them it was exactly the same.
"Still no movement?" the full colonel demanded.
The doctors exchanged a look when he shook his head.
"Give him another pill."
Nurse Duckett made a note to give Yossarian another pill, and the four of them moved along to the next bed. None of the nurses liked Yossarian. Actually, the pain in his liver had gone away, but Yossarian didnt say anything and the doctors never suspected. They just suspected that he had been moving his bowels and not telling anyone.
Yossarian had everything he wanted in the hospital. The food wasn't too bad, and his meals were brought to him in bed. There were extra rations of fresh meat, and during the hot part of the afternoon he and the others were served chilled fruit juice or chilled chocolate milk. Apart from the doctors and the nurses, no one ever disturbed him. For a little while in the morning he had to censor letters, but he was free after that to spend the rest of each day lying around idly with a clear conscience. He was comfortable in the hospital, and it was easy to stay on because he always ran a temperature of 101. He was even more comfortable than Dunbar, who had to keep falling down on his face in order to get his meals brought to him in bed.
After he made up his mind to spend the rest of the war in the hospital, Yossarian wrote letters to everyone he knew saying that he was in the hospital but never mentioning why. One day he had a better idea. To everyone he knew he wrote that he was going on a very dangerous mission. "They asked for volunteers. It's very dangerous, but someone has to do it. I'll write you the instant I get back." And he had not written anyone since.
All the officer patients in the ward were forced to censor letters written by all the enlisted-men patients, who were kept in residence in wards of their own. It was a monotonous job, and Yossarian was disappointed to learn that the lives of enlisted men were only slightly more interesting than the lives of officers. After the first day he had no curiosity at all. To break the monotony he invented games. Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective. The next day he made war on articles. He reached a much higher plane of creativity the following day when he blacked out everything in the letters but a, an and the. That erected more dynamic intralinear tensions, he felt, and in just about every case left a message far more universal. Soon he was proscribing parts of salutations and signatures and leaving the text untouched. One time he blacked out all but the salutation "Dear Mary" from a letter, and at the bottom he wrote, "I yearn for you tragically A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army." A. T. Tappman was the group chaplain's name.
When he had exhausted all possibilities in the letters, he began attacking the names and addresses on the envelopes, obliterating whole homes and streets, annihilating entire metropolises with careless flicks of his wrist as though he were God. Catch-22 required that each censored letter bear the censoring officer's name. Most letters he didn't read at all. On those he didn't read at all he wrote his own name. On those he did read he wrote, "Washington Irving." When that grew monotonous he wrote, "Irving Washington." Censoring the envelopes had serious repercussions, produced a ripple of anxiety on some ethereal military echelon that floated a C.I.D. man back into the ward posing as a patient. They all knew he was a C.I.D. man because he kept inquiring about an officer named Irving or Washington and because after his first day there he wouldn't censor letters. He found them too monotonous.
It was a good ward this time, one of the best he and Dunbar had ever enjoyed. With them this time was the twenty-four-year-old fighter-pilot captain with the sparse golden mustache who had been shot into the Adriatic Sea in midwinter and had not even caught cold. Now the summer was upon them, the captain had not been shot down, and he said he had the grippe. In the bed on Yossarian's right, still lying amorously on his belly, was the startled captain with malaria in his blood and a mosquito bite on his ass. Across the aisle from Yossarian was Dunbar, and next to Dunbar was the artillery captain with whom Yossarian had stopped playing chess. The captain was a good chess player, and the games were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so interesting they were foolish. Then there was the educated Texan from Texas who looked like someone in Technicolor and felt, patriotically, that people of means - decent folk should be given more votes than drifters, whores, criminals, degenerates, atheists and indecent folk - people without means.
Yossarian was unspringing rhythms in the letters the day they brought the Texan in. It was another quiet, hot, untroubled day. The heat pressed heavily on the roof, stifling sound. Dunbar was lying motionless on his back again with his eyes staring up at the ceiling like a doll's. He was working hard at increasing his life span. He did it by cultivating boredom. Dunbar was working so hard at increasing his life span that Yossarian thought he was dead. They put the Texan in a bed in the middle of the ward, and it wasn't long before he donated his views.
Dunbar sat up like a shot. "That's it," he cried excitedly. "There was something missing - all the time I knew there was something missing - and now I know what it is." He banged his fist down into his palm. "No patriotism," he declared.
"You're right," Yossarian shouted back. "You're right, you're right, you're right. The hot dog, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Mom's apple pie. That's what everyone's fighting for. But who's fighting for the decent folk? Who's fighting for more votes for the decent folk? There's no patriotism, that's what it is. And no matriotism, either."
The warrant officer on Yossarian's left was unimpressed. "Who gives a shit?" he asked tiredly, and turned over on his side to go to sleep.
The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him.
He sent shudders of annoyance scampering up ticklish spines, and everybody fled from him - everybody but the soldier in white, who had no choice. The soldier in white was encased from head to toe in plaster and gauze. He had two useless legs and two useless arms. He had been smuggled into the ward during the night, and the men had no idea he was among them until they awoke in the morning and saw the two strange legs hoisted from the hips, the two strange arms anchored up perpendicularly, all four limbs pinioned strangely in air by lead weights suspended darkly above him that never moved. Sewn into the bandages over the insides of both elbows were zippered lips through which he was fed clear fluid from a clear jar. A silent zinc pipe rose from the cement on his groin and was coupled to a slim rubber hose that carried waste from his kidneys and dripped it efficiently into a clear, stoppered jar on the floor. When the jar on the floor was full, the jar feeding his elbow was empty, and the two were simply switched quickly so that stuff could drip back into him. All they ever really saw of the soldier in white was a frayed black hole over his mouth.
The soldier in white had been filed next to the Texan, and the Texan sat sideways on his own bed and talked to him throughout the morning, afternoon and evening in a pleasant, sympathetic drawl. The Texan never minded that he got no reply.
Temperatures were taken twice a day in the ward. Early each morning and late each afternoon Nurse Cramer entered with a jar full of thermometers and worked her way up one side of the ward and down the other, distributing a thermometer to each patient. She managed the soldier in white by inserting a thermometer into the hole over his mouth and leaving it balanced there on the lower rim. When she returned to the man in the first bed, she took his thermometer and recorded his temperature, and then moved on to the next bed and continued around the ward again. One afternoon when she had completed her first circuit of the ward and came a second time to the soldier in white, she read his temperature and discovered that he was dead.
"Murderer," Dunbar said quietly.
The Texan looked up at him with an uncertain grin.
"Killer," Yossarian said.
"What are you talkin' about?" the Texan asked nervously.
"You murdered him," said Dunbar.
"You killed him," said Yossarian.
The Texan shrank back. "You fellas are crazy. I didnt even touch him."
"You murdered him," said Dunbar.
"I heard you kill him," said Yossarian.
"You killed him because he was a nigger," Dunbar said.
"You fellas are crazy," the Texan cried. "They don't allow niggers in here. They got a special place for niggers."
"The sergeant smuggled him in," Dunbar said.
"The Communist sergeant," said Yossarian.
"And you knew it."
The warrant officer on Yossarian's left was unimpressed by the entire incident of the soldier in white. The warrant officer was unimpressed by everything and never spoke at all unless it was to show irritation.
The day before Yossarian met the chaplain, a stove exploded in the mess hall and set fire to one side of the kitchen.
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Chicago Sun-Times (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
An apocalyptic masterpiece. |
The New Republic (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
One of the most bitterly funny works in the language... explosive, bitter, subversive, brilliant. |
John (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
A monumental artifact of contemporary American literature, almost as assured of longevity as the statues on Easter Island... Catch-22 is a novel that reminds us once again of all that we have taken for granted in our world and should not, the madness we try not to bother and notice, the deceptions and falsehoods we lack the will to try to distinguish from truth. |
, USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
There's a war on, everyone is crazy, and none of the airmen who has flown close to the mandatory number of missions seems very happy when someone raises the number of mandatory missions. There's a way out: all a crazy airman has to do is to ask the doctor to ground him. But there's a catch.
"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle."
Thus Joseph Heller introduced a new term into the English vernacular. Catch-22 is a view of the world in all its absurdity and contradiction. It's a novel that explores critical issues like war, identity, and the struggle of the individual against bureaucracy run amok - all while being tremendously funny.
The story centers around Yossarian, a bombardier trying desperately to save himself; men he knows keep dying because they're sent on one dangerous mission after another in an effort by their commanding officer to show his zeal and to be promoted.
Each chapter in the novel is entitled for a character or location in the story, allowing us to focus before moving on to the next part of the story. In this structure, we learn the absurdity of the situation, the apparent inability of anyone to stop the wheels of the bureaucracy, and the success of those who exploit it to their own ends, all while proclaiming themselves to be working for the greater good. (Everyone, after all, has a share.) Then there are the efforts to achieve recognition by the sincerity of the form-letters sent to the families of the airmen killed. And the work of a schemer trying to get his picture the Saturday Evening Post.
Some call it bitter or critical of bureaucracy. I call it an honest look at the results of consolidating power. Catch-22 is a brilliant work, well- deserving of its reputation as a classic of American literature, one of the best novels of the twentieth century, a thoughtful commentary that apparently heeds the advice offered by another brilliant explorer of the human condition from a century before.
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