On the Italian island of Pianosa during the second half of World War II, a young pilot of Assyrian descent named Yossarian and his comrades are stationed together as an air force unit. The loosely connected stories and anecdotes that are told from Yossarian’s perspective reflect his point of view: he addresses no abstract concepts like national pride, instead insisting that millions of people are out to kill him and growing angry that he has to endure the hardships of war. Throughout the story, Yossarian tries his best to avoid fighting in the war by faking various illnesses, and ultimately deriving a plan to get him sent home: a successful demonstration of insanity. His commanding officers, however, find a way of making a loophole to fit their agendas. Military regulation Catch-22 states that any person who wants to avoid bombing missions by claiming insanity is obviously sane, and still fit for duty. Meanwhile, they continue to raise the number of required missions before pilots are sent home. In the end, Yossarian is arrested for being away without leave, and is given an ultimatum: he must publicly endorse his commanding officers’ cruel policies and go home with an honorable discharge, or do otherwise and face a court martial. He manages to escape to neutral Sweden where he rejects the rules of Catch-22 governing his life and tries to start over again.
Overview of Catch 22’s characters and structure
The book is sub-divided into 42 chapters, each primarily about an individual character and frequently with reference to Yossarian. There is little adherence to chronology and the book frequently shifts in time, and characters from all chapters appear in the others. Of course, no absurdist portrayal of war would be complete without a colorful cast. Yossarian, who frequently complains that millions of people are trying to kill him, is the paranoid bombardier who is obsessed with living and immortality and intently avoids flying combat missions. Milo Minderbender is a mess officer who runs an international black-market syndicate under several premises of the general breed of Catch-22. Colonel Cathcart is Yossarian’s commanding officer, who ambitiously risks his men’s lives on dangerous missions as part of his plans to become a general (his last name, interestingly, is an anagram for “Catch-art.”) Doc Daneeka is the flight surgeon who bitterly hates his duties because he was forced to leave a lucrative practice at home to join the military. Huple is the fifteen-year-old pilot who lied about his age to join the military. Major Major Major, formerly Major Major, is the officer who was promoted because of an IBM computer error caused by his unfortunate name, and who jumps out of his office window to avoid visitors. Among many others are Chief White Halfoat, the illiterate intelligence officer whose oil-striking Native American family was followed everywhere by speculators; Appleby, the pilot and former Ping-Pong champion from Iowa; Aarfy, the frat-boy navigator with a poor sense of direction; and Lieutenant Schiesskopf, the parade-fanatic officer who transfers from Yossarian’s cadet school to Pianosa.
By its nature, military lends itself to the whims of necessity. War is a form of emergency, and military is the means by which we survive such an emergency. The necessary power structure for military, then, is one that requires expert understanding of military affairs and that can adjust quickly. Operations certainly can not be conducted effectively in a democratic or decentralized manner, so the only effective arrangement of a military is one with a strict command hierarchy (dictatorships which answer to dictatorships). Naturally, any dictatorial structure of permanence- which could provide for the livelihood of individuals staffing it- often becomes subject to arbitrary wills that go beyond the necessity of emergency and into the luxury of personal interest.
Bureaucracy and control via language
Catch-22 is a book about such a system. Consider that emergency and necessity can often be construed as leading to a vacuum of civilization and a sea of coercion. Appropriately, the book is set in an island air force base and most of the plot items relate to the non-combat elements of war, which are no exception. Officers and military brass fight each other for power while enlisted men try their best to shirk their duties. Strange occurrences, such as the dead man in Yossarian’s tent who remains there for days, persist as a result of holes in the rigid military bureaucracy.
The absolute power of bureaucracy is a primary target of Heller’s criticism, as it sets the stage for most of the conflicts in the book. The bickering Generals, Peckem and Dreedle, are engaged in constant abuse of their powers in order to gain the upper hand over one another. Meanwhile, their inferior officers also have squabbles of their own. Caught in the middle are the enlisted men, who are used as pawns in their superiors’ games. The premise of the central plot is that Yossarian’s commanding officer, Colonel Cathcart, in a bid for promotion, tries to compete with other Colonels by volunteering his men for the most dangerous and numerous missions while simultaneously raising the number of missions required to earn an extended leave home as his men complete them.
The notion of language as a means of control also appears on several occasions. Part of Cathcart’s never-ending missions involves the use of regulation Catch-22:
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a 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.
The meanings of “crazy” and “sane” are wildly equivocated to create a rule which works to the advantage of the greater premise of Catch-22, which is that the men must do what their superiors say and they have no say in the matter. Language provides the loophole by which persons of authority can pass off their own arbitrary wills as laws; it is the means by which semantic parallelism or other parlor tricks can be passed off as reasoning (see John Stuart Mill’s justification for Utilitarianism!) When the Chaplain Tappman is accused of stealing a tomato, his denial of guilt is answered, “then why would we be questioning you if you weren’t guilty?” The faux-reasoning of the authorities in Catch-22 are part of a greater ridicule by Heller of distorted justice, possibly with contemporary overtones directed toward McCarthyism.
Heller also attacks greed and excessive ambition through Milo Minderbinder, the mess officer turned savvy black market entrepreneur. When Milo buys a stock of Egyptian cotton that no one wants, he runs out of funds. Desperate for money, he makes a contract with the Germans to bomb his own airbase. Milo often speaks of “the syndicate,” his company, and claims that “everyone has a share.” In other words, “what’s good for the syndicate is good for the country.” This is clearly a perversion of the concept that profit-seeking companies, if successful, provide a greater benefit to society at large. The concept actually entails production, which is precisely the opposite of what Milo’s operation was doing. In fact, Milo conducts most of his trade between parts of his own company, and collecting money upon each transaction- the greater benefit only reaching him.
Catch 22’s plot is a vehicle
Plot is only a tertiary attribute of Catch-22. It is merely a vessel by which Heller is given reason (however little, at times) to reveal one of many nonsensical characters who commit nonsensical acts. The story is plagued by accidents and mishaps, often caused or exacerbated by absurd behavior by eccentric characters. These include the tragic deaths of some of the soldiers, such as Kid Sampson, who is killed when the prankster McWatt flies close by a beach and slashes him in half with a propeller. McWatt, traumatized, then proceeds to fly the plane into a mountain, killing himself. There are many sub-plots, usually related to a particular set of minor characters. Often in the book, these sub-plots are connected with each other via means of revelation much later. Major —- de Coverley’s missing eye, for example, was poked out by a rose at a parade in Rome, which is later discovered to have been thrown by the old man who ridicules America at the brothel where the airmen go on leave.
Catch 22’s setting
Setting plays little role in the development of Catch-22. There are few scenic descriptions or “auras” for any given scene. The details, such as the base being on Pianosa or the period being that of World War II, are contingent and would not alter much of the story if they were otherwise. In fact, it would be more adequate to say that the characters form the backdrop for the main plot, which is centered about Yossarian. Dialogue fuels thematic development by exposing the petty, deluded, insane, or otherwise illogical thoughts and plans of the characters that Heller intends to ridicule. Colonel Cathcart characterizes his “wins and losses” as “feathers in his hat” or “black eyes.” Character back-stories, usually told in their respective chapters, also contribute to the general nonsense.
Catch 22’s plain, yet effective style
Stylistically, Catch-22 was brilliant for its time and is extremely entertaining today. It is often funny and frequently subtle, yet all of it is couched in a relatively plain American prose. Contradiction, paradox, irrationality, and eccentricity are what make the book humorous in the end, but these are more thematic than stylistic characteristics. Of course, Heller’s presentation effectively conveys his themes, which do not require parallelism, complex imagery, or rhyme to be expressed; plain statement suffices. Overall, Catch-22 is a fairly long, detail-rich read full of humorous insights into logical fallacy and its forced legitimacy by authority. It is a story of a fairly reasonable person, Yossarian, who is caught between death from the enemy’s flak guns and death from his superior officers’ displeasure. Moreover, it is a universal story of a rational individual forced to exist in a system that operates by irrational rules. Ironically, the conclusion of Catch-22 ultimately undermines the authority: when Yossarian is presented with his ultimatum- betray his comrades, or face court-martial- he chooses neither and escapes. At last, the closed and never-ending loop of poor logic, the Catch-22, is broken.