#josephheller

Note on the text: I used Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 as published by Simon and Schuster in 2011

But Yossarian couldn’t be happy. . .. because outside the hospital there was still nothing funny going on. The only thing going on was a war and no one seemed notice. . . . And when Yossarian tried to remind people, they drew away from him and thought he was crazy (16).

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind (46).

What an uproariously funny book this is about the lunacy of war, and the best part is that the book’s comedy and its heart both come from the same place: a love of humanity and of life, and an absolute disdain for the chaos and destruction that war brings.

Nothing makes sense in Yossarian’s world. He is the absolute straight man, a rationalist, in a world that has gone absolutely bonkers. There are no rules. In many ways this book plays like a 450 page version of “who’s on first”, and it is against this backdrop, where nothing that anybody does makes any sense, that war is lampooned as the ultimate piece of lunacy. This exchange between Colonel Scheisskopf, Major Metcalf, and their subordinate Clevinger is an example of the ridiculous, nonsensical way in which these people interact with each other:

“In sixty days you’ll be fighting Billy Petrolle’ the colonel with the big fat mustache roared. ‘And you think it’s all one big fat joke.’

‘I don’t think it’s a joke sir’ Clevinger replied.

‘Don’t interrupt’

‘Yes sir’

‘And say sir when you do’ ordered Major Mercalf.

‘Yes sir’

‘Weren’t you just ordered to not interrupt?’ Major Metcalf inquired coldly.

‘But I didn’t interrupt sir’ Clevinger protested.

‘No, and you didn’t say ‘sir’ either. Add that to the list of charges against [him]. . . . Failure to say ‘sir’ to superior officers when not interrupting them (75).

Yet, as funny and absurd as moments like that are, it’s the quiet moments that prove to be the most absurd. Because it’s in those moments that one realizes just how absurd the whole situation is . It’s absurd because the people in those situations value the wrong things. They over value things like rule valuing and undervalue the importance of life itself. Yossarian understands the true price of war in ways that most of the other people in the novel don’t. He knows that there is something innately absurd in the ways that people, like his comrade Kraft, are killed, and then people just try to move on like nothing happened. Kraft, like many soldiers, was just a

skinny harmless kid from Pennsylvania who wanted only to be liked and was destined to be disappointed in even so humble and degrading an ambition. Instead of being liked he was dead, a bleeding cinder under a barbarous pile whom nobody heard in those last moments while the plane with one wing went plummeted. He had lived innocuously for a little while, and then gone down in flames over Ferreira on the seventh day, while God was resting (54-55).

Not even God was paying attention. But Yossarian was. He saw a man die who didn’t deserve to. And that changes everything for him. If the first half of the book is about the absurdity of war, then the second half is about the fact that life really does matter. There’s an Italian soldier who hints at this idea when he talks to a group of American soldiers about the true price of winning a war:

You put so much stock into winning wars’, the grubby, inquisitous old man scoffed. ‘The real trick is in losing wars, [and] in knowing which wars can’t be lost. Italy has been losing wars for centuries and just see how splendidly we’ve done nonetheless. France wins wars and is in a continual state of crisis. Germany loses and prospers. Look at our recent history. Italy wins a war in Ethiopia and promptly stumbles into serious trouble. Victory gave us such insane delusions of grandeur that we helped start a war we hadn’t a chance of winning. But now that we are losing again, everything has taken a turn for the better and we will certainly come out on top again if we succeed in being defeated (245).

Winning wars gives countries the illusion that war is just a game. One that can be won with minimal effort and no real causalities. Losing offers no such delusion.

Later on, as the war is winding down and Yossarian is trying to figure out how to transition back to civilian life, he starts really realizing just how important it is that humans learn how to love and take care of each other. In fact there’s a scene where he is looking for a missing twelve year old sister of a prostitute that he knew simply because “she’s just a little kid, and she’s all alone in this city with no one to take care of her. I want to protect her from harm” (409). It’s also at this time that Chaplain Tapporan’s conscience similarly starts to awaken to the enormity of what has been happening around him:

the disaster was too immense to contemplate. Twelve men killed- how ghastly, how very awful! His feelings of terror grew. He prayed instinctively that Yossarian, Nately, Hungry Joe, and his other friends would not be listed among the victims, then berated himself repeatedly for to pray for their safety was to pray for the death of other young men that he did not even know. It was too late to pray; yet that was all he knew (377).

War is inhuman in the way it deals out death and destruction. So the question remains: why do we do it? And towards the end of this uproariously funny book, Joseph Heller gives his answer:

At the next corner, a man was beating a small boy brutally in the midst of an immovable crowd of spectators who made no effort to intervene. Yossarian recoiled with sickening recognition. He was certain he had witnessed the same horrible scene before. Deja Vu? The sinister coincidence shook him and filled him with doubt and dread. It was the same scene he had witnessed a block before, although everything in it seemed quite different. What in the world was happening? Would a squat woman step out and ask the man to please stop?. . . . Nobody moved. The child cried steadily as though he was in drugged misery. The man kept knocking him down with hard, resounding, palm open, blows to the head, and then jerking [back] up to his feet in order to knock him down again. No one in the sullen, cowering crowd seemed to care enough about the stunned and beaten boy to intervene (415).

10 great books over the next ten days. Books that I’ve enjoyed reading and re-reading.

Catch 22. The first book that my dad gave me (apart from the bloody bible) as a young adult with a “try this, I think you’ll like it.”

The first time Yossarian saw the Chaplain he fell in love with him. A perfect opening sentence to draw you in. It worked for me.

About the bible - stupid, hated it and all the baggage that went with it, still do.

In the beginning. Rubbish opening line. On a par with once upon a time.