Catch-22
JOSEPH HELLER
1961

INTRODUCTION

Catch-22, published in 1961, is probably the best-known and most widely read novel of World War II. Its author, Joseph Heller, saw combat as an American bombardier in the last year of the war, but Catch-22 is unlike the more conventional novels of World War II that preceded it. It mixes scenes of outlandish, over-the-top satire with scenes that depict the mortal terror and horrific violence of combat. Reading Catch-22 can be both entertaining and disturbing, as the narrative veers from wild slapstick to sheer terror and back again in just a few paragraphs. It is a wild, surreal, hilarious, and often unsettling evocation of the absurdity and violence of war.

Catch-22 follows the experiences of Captain Yossarian, a bombardier in the Mediterranean theater of World War II in 1944, who flies missions from the island of Pianosa over targets in Italy and France. He is surrounded by a huge cast of colorful and often bizarre characters, who are intended to satirize not only military life but life in any large institution. They include Doc Daneeka, the base medical officer who is more concerned with his own problems than with those of his patients; Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder, the mess officer who uses his connections to build a massive commercial empire that includes dealing with the enemy; Major Major Major, a painfully shy man who looks like the actor Henry Fonda and who immediately rises to the rank of major; and Nately, the heartbreakingly naive lieutenant in love with an Italian prostitute who barely notices that he exists.

Catch-22 does not tell its story in chronological order but starts in the middle and jumps backwards and forward in time. The narrative is structured around chapters that focus on individual characters such as Colonel Cathcart, the squadron commander, or A.T. Tappman (who was called R. O. Shipman in the early editions of the novel), the base chaplain. It is also structured around extended sequences that stretch out over several chapters, such as the Great Big Siege of Bologna or the scenes of Yossarian and the other men on leave in Rome. A few episodes are returned to several times throughout the book. The most crucial of these is the death of the gunner Snowden in the raid over Avignon, France. The book returns to this scene again and again, revealing a little more each time, until the next-to-last chapter, when the full extent of Snowden's wounds is revealed in all its horror.

The book took Heller eight years to write. By the time it appeared at the beginning of the 1960s, a new kind of storytelling that used satire and black, or dark, comedy to examine some of the most unpleasant truths about human nature was coming to the fore in American culture, novels, movies, and works of popular art. Around the same time Catch-22 was published, topics that had only been dealt with seriously before were explored by such artists as the comedian Dick Gregory in his stand-up routines about racial injustice; by the novelist Ken Kesey, in his darkly comic novel about mental illness, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; and by the filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, in his savage satire about nuclear holocaust, Dr. Strangelove. Foremost among these works of art was Catch-22, and its success, especially among college-age readers during the Vietnam War, is evident in its echoes in later works, such as Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five and the film and television series M?A?S?H. Even the fictional rule, the Catch-22 of the title, has entered the dictionary and common speech as a term for an unsolvable and absurd paradox.

PLOT SUMMARY

Chapter 1: The Texan

At the beginning of Catch-22, Captain Yossarian, a bombardier for the U.S. Army Air Force in World War II, checks himself into the base hospital on the Mediterranean island of Pianosa with a pain in his liver. The doctors cannot find anything wrong, and the nurses do not like him. He passes the time censoring the letters of enlisted men, deleting passages at his whim and signing his work "Washington Irving." He shares the ward with a friendly Texan, his friend Dunbar, and the soldier in white, a silent patient wrapped head to toe in bandages. A man from the C.I.D. (Criminal Investigation Division) is sent to the hospital to discover the identity of Washington Irving. Meanwhile, Yossarian is visited by the base chaplain, A. T. Tappman, and Yossarian admits he is not really sick. He just does not want to fight in the war anymore. Finally, the annoying cheerfulness of the Texan drives Yossarian and Dunbar out of the hospital and back to duty.

Chapter 2: Clevinger

Before he goes into the hospital, Yossarian argues one night with Clevinger. Yossarian says that the enemy is trying to kill him, and Clevinger replies that they are trying to kill everyone, not just Yossarian. "And what difference does that make?" asks Yossarian. Yossarian shares a tent with Orr, who spends his time tinkering. On one side of them lives Havermayer, who shoots at mice with his .45, and on the other side live Nately and McWatt. Yossarian visits Doc Daneeka, the medical officer, and asks to be taken off combat duty, but Daneeka says the squadron colonel wants everyone to fly fifty combat missions before they can be relieved, and Yossarian has flown only forty-four.

Chapter 3: Havermayer

After leaving the hospital, Yossarian returns to his tent. He remembers the time on leave in Rome when a prostitute tried to kill Orr with her high-heeled shoe. In another tent is Hungry Joe, who screams in his sleep and keeps everyone awake. Meanwhile, General P. P. Peckem wants to replace General Dreedle as the unit commander. Peckem sends U.S.O. entertainers to the base, and his inept colonel, Cargill, orders the men to attend the shows whether they want to or not. Yossarian asks Daneeka again to ground him, and Daneeka says he has troubles of his own. Havermayer continues to shoot at mice, and Hungry Joe hides in one of the slit trenches that appeared after Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder, the mess officer, bombed the squadron in a business deal with the Germans.

BIOGRAPHY
Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller was born on May 1, 1923, and he grew up in Brooklyn, New York, near Coney Island. After graduating from high school in 1941, he worked as a file clerk in an insurance office and then enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1942. Inspired by heroic war movies popular at the time, he was eager to see combat action.

Heller served for three years in the Army Air Corps. From May until December 1944, he was stationed on the Mediterranean island of Corsica with the Twelfth Air Force, where he flew sixty combat missions over Italy and France as a bombardier in B-25 Mitchell bombers. On his thirty-seventh mission, over Avignon, France, his plane was badly damaged, and he was terrified of flying for years afterward. In December 1944, Heller was rotated home. He was discharged honorably as a first lieutenant, with an Air Medal and a Presidential Unit Citation.

After the war, Heller attended college under the G.I. Bill and worked in advertising in New York. Based on his wartime experiences, Catch-22 was published in 1961 to mixed reviews and slow sales. After its paperback edition was released in October 1962, it sold two million copies in the first year alone and became one of the most widely read novels of the 1960s.

Heller wrote several other novels, a play, and a memoir. He died in 1999.

Chapter 4: Doc Daneeka

Doc Daneeka complains to Yossarian that the war has ruined his civilian medical practice. He broods over his own health and lets his orderlies do most of the work. Yossarian recalls disrupting the classes run by Clevinger in Captain Black's intelligence tent by asking surreal questions, causing Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn to make a rule that the only people who can ask questions are those who never do. General Dreedle orders the men to shoot skeet, leading to an escalation of the feud between Dreedle and Peckem, which is further aggravated by ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, a clerk at headquarters.

Chapter 5: Chief White Halfoat

Doc Daneeka tells Yossarian a story about two sexually inexperienced patients in his civilian practice. Daneeka's roommate, an Indian named Chief White Halfoat, complains that back in Oklahoma, oil was discovered everywhere his family lived, so that oil companies continually followed them around and then kicked them off the land. Later, Yossarian asks Daneeka to ground him again. Daneeka says he cannot because of Catch-22: No one can be grounded unless he is crazy, and even then he has to ask. But if he asks to be grounded in the face of the real dangers of combat, then he is not crazy and has to fly more missions. So if he flies, he is crazy and does not have to, but if he asks to be grounded, he is sane and has to fly. Yossarian recalls a mission over Avignon, France. As the bombardier, he directed the plane to the target, and the copilot, Dobbs, thought Yossarian had been hurt. But the only one hurt was a crewman named Snowden.

Chapter 6: Hungry Joe

Hungry Joe keeps flying the required number of missions, but every time, just before his discharge papers arrive, Colonel Cathcart raises the number. Chief White Halfoat punches Colonel Moodus, General Dreedle's son-in-law, in the nose, to General Dreedle's delight. He orders the chief to live with Doc Daneeka, in order to keep him under a doctor's care. Meanwhile, Cathcart raises the number of missions to fifty-five, and Yossarian complains to ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, who tells him that Catch-22 says he must keep flying.

Chapter 7: McWatt

Yossarian thinks that McWatt, his usual pilot, is the craziest man in the unit, because he is perfectly sane and still does not mind flying combat missions. Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder, the new mess officer, is a skilled operator and tries to involve Yossarian in a series of complicated and shady business deals. Milo uses his position as mess officer to make a profit, and then claims he is doing it for the benefit of all the men in the unit.

Chapter 8: Lieutenant Scheisskopf

Clevinger is well-educated and clueless, a Harvard graduate with lots of intelligence and no brains. Clevinger and Yossarian went to cadet school together in Santa Ana, California, where they served under Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who is only interested in making cadets march on parade. Meanwhile, Scheisskopf's wife and her friend Dori Duz sleep with many of the cadets under Scheisskopf's command, including Yossarian, who hopes that the war will be over before his cadet training ends. Scheisskopf despises Clevinger for being smart and has him tried on trumped-up charges. At the trial, Clevinger is barely able to defend himself against the trial board's hostile and illogical questions, and he realizes that his own officers hate him even more than the Germans do.

Chapter 9: Major Major Major Major

Major Major Major was given his name as a joke by his father, a drunken farmer. A shy, docile man who resembles the actor Henry Fonda, he succeeds in college by doing whatever is asked of him. In the army, a computer error makes him a major, so that he is now Major Major Major Major. At cadet school, Lieutenant Scheisskopf does not know what to do with a trainee who outranks him, so he sends Major Major to a combat posting in Pianosa, where at last Major Major makes real friends. He then loses them when Colonel Cathcart makes him squadron commander out of sheer spite. Depressed, Major Major starts signing all official papers as "Washington Irving." A C.I.D. man is sent to investigate, and another C.I.D. man arrives to investigate the first C.I.D. man. Major Major tells his assistant, Sergeant Towser, that from now on he will only see people in his office when he is not in his office. Yossarian catches him one day outside the office and asks Major Major to ground him, but Major Major says there is nothing he can do.

Chapter 10: Wintergreen

Coming back from a mission, Clevinger's plane goes missing. His disappearance reminds Yossarian of an incident back in the United States. During training, he first met ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, who was always being punished for going AWOL (away without leave) by being made to dig holes and then fill them up. Meanwhile, Appleby, another officer, tries to report Yossarian to Major Major for refusing to take his antimalarial pills, but he cannot see Major Major unless Major Major is out. Appleby thinks all officers are crazy. Sergeant Towser thinks everyone in uniform is crazy, and he remembers Mudd, the dead man in Yossarian's tent. Mudd is not really in Yossarian's tent, but his gear is, where it has been since he was killed in combat before he officially reported for duty. Yossarian considers how Mudd's possessions are contaminated with death, just as everything else was after the Great Big Siege of Bologna, during which Colonel Cathcart volunteered his squadron to bomb the ammunition dumps in Bologna, Italy. Everyone is required to fly the mission, and Colonel Korn orders the medical tents nailed shut, so that no one can claim illness.

Chapter 11: Captain Black

Captain Black wants to be squadron commander and is furious when Major Major gets the job. He is thrilled by the raid on Bologna, because he hates the men and the raid will be especially dangerous. To get back at Major Major, Black begins the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade, requiring every man to swear a loyalty oath in order to receive the simplest necessities, like meals. The crusade is ended by Major—de Coverley, who refuses to swear and demands, "Gimme eat," in the mess line.

Chapter 12: Bologna

The raid on Bologna is delayed by rain, and the men hope it rains forever. When the rain stops, Yossarian secretly moves the bomb line on the map, so that Captain Black and Colonel Korn think that Bologna has been captured and the raid is no longer necessary. Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen starts selling stolen cigarette lighters and wishes he could compete with Milo Minderbinder, who has cornered the market in Egyptian cotton and cannot sell any of it. Yossarian reveals to Clevinger that he moved the bomb line, and Clevinger accuses Yossarian of giving comfort to the enemy. Yossarian replies that the enemy is whoever is going to get him killed, no matter which side he is on. When he goes for a dangerous jeep ride with Nately, Dunbar, and a drunken Chief White Halfoat behind the wheel, Yossarian discovers that the rain has stopped. Hungry Joe is tormented by Huple's cat, which likes to sleep on Hungry Joe's face.

Chapter 13: Major—de Coverley

Major—de Coverley is older than the other officers in the squadron and more mysterious. With a thick head of white hair and an eye patch, he devotes himself to playing horseshoes and to renting apartments in captured cities for the men to use on leave. Major—de Coverley is so intimidating that none of the men, except for Milo, know how to talk to him. Milo arranges to have—de Coverley transport fresh eggs from Malta. Colonel Cathcart recalls the time he gave Yossarian a medal for leading the squadron in a dangerous second bombing pass over Ferrara, Italy. A crewman named Kraft was killed as a result, and in order to save the squadron from criticism for taking two tries to hit the target, Cathcart gives Yossarian a medal and promotes him to captain.

Chapter 14: Kid Sampson

At last the raid to Bologna takes off, and Yossarian is now too afraid to go over the target even once. Faking a malfunction in the plane's intercom, he orders the pilot, Kid Sampson, to return to base, where Yossarian sleeps on the beach until the rest of the squadron comes back. When the squadron returns with no losses, Yossarian assumes that clouds over the target kept them from bombing it, but it turns out there was no antiaircraft fire, and the raid was a milk run, or a perfectly safe one.

Chapter 15: Piltchard & Wren

Captains Piltchard and Wren, the squadron's operations officers, enjoy flying combat missions. They gently chastise Yossarian for turning back from Bologna. They also reveal that the first raid missed the ammunition dumps, so the squadron will have to return. They assign Yossarian to be lead bombardier. Yossarian thinks the raid will be another milk run, but this time there is fierce antiaircraft fire. Yossarian desperately guides McWatt, the pilot, through evasive maneuvers and loses his temper at Aarfy, the navigator, who is eerily cheerful. Yossarian watches several planes go down in flames. He thinks one of the destroyed planes might be Orr's, but then he sees Orr's plane, damaged but still flying. After returning to base, Yossarian flees to Rome for a leave.

Chapter 16: Luciana

Yossarian spends most of his leave with a beautiful young woman named Luciana who says that she will let him buy her dinner, but she will not sleep with him. Finally, she sleeps with him, and Yossarian decides he loves her. She tells him about a scar on her back that she got during an American air raid. When Hungry Joe bursts in with a camera, they get dressed and leave the building. She gives Yossarian her number, saying he will tear it up as soon as she is gone. Yossarian says he will not, and then he tears up her number as soon as she is gone. Returning to base, he finds out that Cathcart has raised the number of missions to sixty, and he checks himself into the hospital.

Chapter 17: The Soldier in White

This chapter returns to the scene of Chapter 1. Yossarian concludes that he is safer in the hospital, where the death rate is lower than in combat. He recalls the raid over Avignon, when he crawled to the dying crewman Snowden in the back of the plane. In the hospital ward, Yossarian, Dunbar, the friendly Texan, and the two nurses, Duckett and Cramer, contemplate the soldier in white, who is bandaged from head to toe. They wonder who he is and if there is even anybody inside the bandages. Yossarian considers the injustice of having to fly more missions and the dangers he faces from everyone from Hitler to his superior officers to the two nurses on the ward, all of whom, he thinks, want him dead. He asks Doc Daneeka again to ground him, and the doctor says he will, if Yossarian flies fifty-five missions. Daneeka asks Yossarian to have McWatt put the doctor's name on his flight manifest for each mission, so that the doctor can collect flight pay without having to go up in a plane.

Chapter 18: The Soldier Who Saw Everything Twice

Back in the United States, when he is still a trainee, Yossarian fakes an abdominal complaint to get into the hospital. The doctors tell him he is in perfect health and ask him to leave, but instead, mimicking another patient, he claims to see everything twice. He spends Thanksgiving in the hospital and promises himself to spend every Thanksgiving there. The following year, however, he spends Thanksgiving in bed with Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife, debating the nature of God. In the hospital, when the soldier who sees everything twice dies, Yossarian announces that he is cured and asks to leave. The doctors ask him to pose as a dead soldier whose family has just arrived, hoping to see him before he dies. Yossarian meets with the family, who think he is their son.

Chapter 19: Colonel Cathcart

Colonel Cathcart is desperate to be a general and asks Chaplain Tappman to say a prayer before each mission, so that the colonel can be featured in the Saturday Evening Post. The chaplain suggests possible prayers, but Cathcart does not want anything heavy or sad, or anything to do with religion. When the chaplain says it would not be fair not to include the enlisted men, Cathcart gives up the whole idea. He offers the chaplain a plum tomato, and the chaplain meekly suggests the men are unhappy that Cathcart has raised the number of missions to sixty. Cathcart says to remind them that there is a war going on.

Chapter 20: Corporal Whitcomb

After his meeting with Colonel Cathcart, the chaplain runs into Colonel Korn, who implies that the chaplain stole the plum tomato Colonel Cathcart gave him. The chaplain lives in the woods away from the other men. He shares his tent with his assistant, Corporal Whitcomb, who resents the chaplain's belief in God and his lack of initiative. Whitcomb torments the chaplain by telling him that a C.I.D. man is investigating the chaplain for stealing the plum tomato and for signing the name "Washington Irving" to official documents. The chaplain is tortured by his own uselessness.

Chapter 21: General Dreedle

Colonel Cathcart thinks Yossarian and the problems he creates are preventing Cathcart from being promoted to general. General Dreedle, who always travels with his sexy nurse and his son-in-law, Colonel Moodus, arrives to award medals to the men, only to find Yossarian, who is to receive a medal, standing in formation naked. His uniform was soaked in Snowden's blood, and he refuses to wear it. Just before the Avignon raid, Dreedle, his nurse, and Colonel Moodus attend the mission briefing, and Yossarian moans at the sight of the nurse in her tight uniform. Soon the whole room is moaning, displeasing the general, and when Major Danby moans for a different reason, Dreedle orders him shot. Colonel Moodus talks his father-in-law out of it, and Colonel Korn takes over the briefing, hoping to impress the general.

Chapter 22: Milo the Mayor

On the Avignon mission, Yossarian finally loses his nerve. Having lied about his age to enlist, Huple, the pilot, is only fifteen years old, and the copilot, Dobbs, has no confidence in him. Dobbs tries to seize the controls away from Huple, sending the plane into a dive, which tears Yossarian's headphone jack out of its socket, cutting him off from the rest of the crew. When he plugs it back in, he hears Dobbs cry for someone to help Snowden, the new gunner. Yossarian crawls to the back of the plane to find Snowden fatally wounded. On the day Cathcart raises the number of missions to sixty, Dobbs asks Yossarian to help him kill Cathcart. Yossarian refuses. At another time, Yossarian and Orr accompany Milo on a supply run and discover that Milo is a powerful figure in various cities and countries all around the Mediterranean.

Chapter 23: Nately's Old Man

In Rome, Nately tracks down the whore he loves, but she wants nothing to do with him. Nately tries to persuade Yossarian and Aarfy to pay for two of her friends so that she will stay. Aarfy refuses, saying he never pays for sex. In the apartment where the prostitutes live, Nately debates a cynical old Italian man, who says that America will lose the war, because America is an empire and empires always fall, and Italy will win, because the Italian people always survive, no matter who conquers them. Bored, Nately's whore goes to bed alone. When Nately finally tries to sleep with her, the whore's kid sister interrupts them. In the morning, Nately is ashamed to realize that the cynical old man reminds him of his father.

Chapter 24: Milo

Milo Minderbinder's syndicate has become so large that he uses planes from every squadron to carry shipments all over the world. He has even had the planes repainted with the logo of M & M Enterprises. He contracts with the American military to bomb a German-held bridge and contracts with the Germans to direct the antiaircraft fire at the American planes during the same raid. Mudd, the dead man in Yossarian's tent, is killed in this raid, and Yossarian is angered. Meanwhile, Milo contracts with the Germans to bomb his own unit. This episode is nearly the end of M &M Enterprises, but Milo persuades nearly everyone that the privatization of war is good for democracy. Doc Daneeka tends the wounded from Milo's raid with the same care he tended Yossarian when he returned from the Avignon mission covered in Snowden's blood. Yossarian refuses to wear his uniform after that and watches Snowden's funeral naked, from the limb of a tree.

Chapter 25: The Chaplain

Chaplain Tappman doubts the existence of God and whether he is doing anybody any good at all. No one realizes he is a normal human being who misses his family and dreams that terrible things are happening to them. He wonders if the naked man he saw in the tree at Snowden's funeral (who was Yossarian) is a sign of God's displeasure with him. He finally confronts Major Major about the number of missions, but he can only go into Major Major's office when Major Major is out. He tries to comfort Captain Flume, who lives in the woods because he is worried that his tentmate, Chief White Halfoat, wants to cut his throat. Meanwhile, Colonel Cathcart promotes Corporal Whitcomb to sergeant because he has created a form letter for notifying families of a soldier's death. Cathcart accuses the chaplain of stealing the plum tomato that he had given the chaplain in Chapter 19, and he has the chaplain thrown out of the officer's club when he tries to socialize with the men.

Chapter 26: Aarfy

Nately falls in love with his whore in Rome one night when she is ignored by the other men. She refuses to take his money, and Nately defends her against Aarfy, who says she is just a whore. Aarfy is a navigator who is always leading his squadron into antiaircraft fire, especially on the mission where Yossarian is wounded by flak. In the hospital, Yossarian and Dunbar pretend to be other people so that they can stay in the same ward. Dunbar pretends to be an enlisted man named A. Fortiori. Nurse Duckett leads Yossarian back to his own bed by his ear.

Chapter 27: Nurse Duckett

In the hospital, Yossarian slips his hand up Nurse Duckett's skirt. She shrieks and a furious doctor chastises Yossarian. Yossarian says he did it because he is crazy. Dobbs visits Yossarian in the hospital and tries again to persuade him to kill Colonel Cathcart, but Yossarian wants to wait and see if the colonel raises the number of missions. After a second psychiatric session, Major Sanderson decides that Yossarian really is crazy and should go home. Instead, he sends the real A. Fortiori home by accident. Yossarian is assigned again to combat, and he tells Doc Daneeka that the psychiatrist said he was crazy and that they shouldn't send a crazy man into combat. "Who else would go?" says Doc Daneeka.

Chapter 28: Dobbs

Yossarian agrees to help Dobbs kill Cathcart, but now Dobbs has flown the required sixty missions and does not need to. Meanwhile, Orr has crashed his plane in the ocean again and was rescued. He tries to persuade Yossarian to fly with him, even though he knows that Yossarian has specifically asked not to. As an incentive, he offers to tell Yossarian why the girl in Rome was hitting him in the head with her shoe, but Yossarian says no. On the next mission, Orr's plane goes down in the ocean. All of Orr's crew members are rescued, except Orr, who drifts away in a raft and disappears.

Chapter 29: Peckem

General Peckem has Scheisskopf, who has been promoted to colonel, transferred to his command, hoping that Scheisskopf will help him in his rivalry with Dreedle. Scheisskopf is upset that he cannot march the men in parades and that he cannot bring his wife overseas. Peckem and Scheisskopf attend a mission briefing of Cathcart's squadron, where the men discover that they will be bombing an undefended Italian village for the sole reason of impressing Peckem with photographs of their tight bomb pattern. Cathcart is jealous that Peckem has brought another colonel to the briefing and takes it over himself. He starts out poorly but is pleased with his performance by the end.

Chapter 30: Dunbar

On the mission over the village, Dunbar deliberately drops his bombs hundreds of yards from the target. Yossarian decides he feels safer flying with McWatt than with Dobbs or Huple. He recalls the mission over Avignon, when he crawled to the back of the plane and found Snowden bleeding from a wound to his leg. On a training flight, McWatt flies too low just for the fun of it, and Yossarian, terrified, threatens to kill him if he does not fly higher. Meanwhile, Yossarian begins an affair with Nurse Duckett, and they have sex on the beach. Yossarian stares at the water and wonders what happened to Clevinger and Orr. One day, McWatt buzzes the beach too low and accidentally cuts Kid Sampson in half with a propeller. As Yossarian, Nurse Duckett, and the men on the beach watch in horror, McWatt, knowing he is in trouble, flies his plane into a mountain. Cathcart, upset by the two deaths, raises the number of missions to sixty-five.

Chapter 31: Mrs. Daneeka

Even though he was not actually on the plane, Doc Daneeka was listed as a passenger in McWatt's plane when it crashed. Everyone assumes he is dead, and Cathcart raises the number of missions to seventy. Daneeka finds it hard to accept that he is dead. Daneeka's wife is notified of his death, and Daneeka sends her letter saying that he is still alive, which the army tells Mrs. Daneeka is a sadistic prank. Her grief is mitigated by the money she collects from various insurance policies. Meanwhile, the men in the squadron ostracize Daneeka, blaming him for the raised number of missions, and he begins to believe that he really is dead. Mrs. Daneeka receives one of Whitcomb's form condolence letters, and she moves with her children to Lansing, Michigan, and leaves no forwarding address.

Chapter 32: Yo-Yo's Roomies

Kid Sampson's severed legs rot on the beach, since no one will touch them. Four young, energetic new officers are moved into Yossarian's tent, where they call him "Yo-Yo" and drive him crazy with their high spirits. He asks Chief White Halfoat to move in and scare them off, but the Chief has decided it is time for him to die of pneumonia. He moves into the hospital. Yossarian's new roommates burn the birch logs Orr left behind and throw out Mudd's belongings, and Yossarian escapes to Rome.

Chapter 33: Nately's Whore

In Rome, Yossarian looks for Luciana, but he cannot find her. He helps Nately rescue his whore from some other officers who are holding her in their room. Back in her own apartment, Nately's whore finally gets a good night's sleep and wakes up in love with Nately. She invites him into her bed, and Nately is so happy he begins to imagine his life in America with his whore and her kid sister. She is angry, however, when he tells her she cannot work as a prostitute any longer, and they fight. He also forbids her from talking to the cynical old man. But, she still misses Nately when he is not there.

Chapter 34: Thanksgiving

On Thanksgiving Day, Milo gives the men a huge feast and lots of whiskey, and that night the drunken men fire machine guns into the air for fun. At first, Yossarian is terrified, thinking that Milo is bombing the squadron again. When he realizes what is really happening, Yossarian grabs his pistol in a rage, wanting to kill somebody. Nately tries to stop him, and Yossarian breaks his nose, putting him in the hospital. The next day, Yossarian and Dunbar go the hospital so that Yossarian can apologize to Nately. Chaplain Tappman is also in the hospital, claiming to suffer from a fake malady he calls Wisconsin shingles. The chaplain is happy now that he has learned how to lie. The soldier in white is returned to the ward. In the general panic, Nurse Duckett tells Yossarian that she overheard some doctors talking about how they were going to make Dunbar disappear. Yossarian goes to warn Dunbar, but he is nowhere to be found.

Chapter 35: Milo the Militant

Chief White Halfoat dies of pneumonia, and Nately volunteers to keep flying more missions in his place, even though he has already flown the required seventy. He does not want to go home unless he can take his whore with him. Yossarian tries to talk him out of it and goes to Milo to for help. Milo's power is at its peak, and he tells Colonel Cathcart that he wants to fly more missions like the other men, though he does not really mean it. He offers to let Cathcart and Colonel Korn run the syndicate while he spends more time in combat. When Cathcart finds out how complicated the syndicate is, he decides—just as Milo wanted him to—that Milo is indispensable where he is. Milo manipulates him further into raising the number of missions to eighty. The next day, the men are rushed off to a particularly dangerous mission, during which Dobbs and Nately are killed.

Chapter 36: The Cellar

Chaplain Tappman takes Nately's death hard. Altogether, twelve men were killed. He drives to the airfield to console the returning men. Three anonymous officers arrest the chaplain and take him to a room in the cellar of Group Headquarters, where they ask him hostile and illogical questions and accuse him of writing "Washington Irving" on official documents and stealing the plum tomato that Colonel Cathcart gave him. They declare him guilty and let him go. The chaplain then confronts Colonel Korn about the disastrous raid, pointing out that some of the men who died had already flown seventy missions. The chaplain threatens to tell General Dreedle, and Korn tells him that Dreedle has been replaced by General Peckem as wing commander.

Chapter 37: General Scheisskopf

General Peckem has just moved into his new office when he learns that Scheisskopf has been promoted to lieutenant general. Scheisskopf, in command of combat operations, now outranks Peckem. Scheisskopf calls Peckem and tells him that he wants everyone to march on parade.

Chapter 38: Kid Sister

Yossarian refuses to fly any more missions. Cathcart and Korn reckon he is upset about the death of Nately. With uncharacteristic kindness, they send him on leave. In Rome, he tells Nately's whore of Nately's death, and she and her kid sister try several times to kill Yossarian. He still refuses to fly more missions, and other men, including Appleby, Havermayer, and one of his new roommates, tell him in secret that he is doing the right thing. Captain Black tells Yossarian that Nately's whore and her kid sister have been evicted from their apartment by the American military police.

Chapter 39: The Eternal City

Yossarian goes AWOL to Rome. Milo tells Yossarian that he is rocking the boat with his continued defiance. In the whore's apartment, the only person left is an old woman, who tells Yossarian that the soldiers chased away all the prostitutes, using Catch-22 as their justification. She does not know where Nately's whore or her kid sister has gone. Yossarian returns to Milo and promises to fly more missions if Milo will help him find Nately's whore's kid sister, who is only twelve. At first, Milo agrees but then becomes caught up with dealing in illegal tobacco, and he disappears. Yossarian aimlessly walks the streets of Rome, the Eternal City, all night. He witnesses horrific scenes of depravity and violence. Back at his apartment, he learns that Aarfy has raped and murdered a girl. Yossarian is outraged. The men hear the M.P.s coming. But when they arrive, the M.P.s apologize to Aarfy for intruding and arrest Yossarian for being AWOL. They escort him back to Pianosa, where Colonel Korn greets him by saying, "We're sending you home."

Chapter 40: Catch-22

Cathcart and Korn promise to send Yossarian home, with one catch. All he has to do is like them and say nice things about them back in the United States. Yossarian knows that this is not fair to the other men in the squadron, but he takes the deal. They shake hands, and he leaves happy. On the way out of headquarters, though, he is stabbed by Nately's whore, who is disguised as a private in green fatigues.

Chapter 41: Snowden

In the hospital, the doctors bicker over how to treat Yossarian. When Yossarian awakes from surgery, the chaplain visits him, and Yossarian tells him about the deal he accepted from Cathcart and Korn. He recalls what may have been a dream of a strange man saying, "We've got your pal." He decides that the man meant that death had claimed all his friends, like Clevinger, Orr, Dobbs, Kid Sampson, McWatt, Nately, and Dunbar. Only Hungry Joe is left, says Yossarian, and the chaplain tells him that Hungry Joe has died in his sleep, smothered by Huple's cat. After the chaplain leaves, a thin man in a bathrobe awakes Yossarian in the middle of the night and says, "We've got your pal." The man escapes, and Yossarian, in a cold sweat, finally remembers all the details of Snowden's death. At first, he thought Snowden was only wounded in his leg, but when he opens Snowden's flak suit, Snowden's entrails slither to the floor. Yossarian screams. In the pile of entrails, Yossarian reads the message that the spirit is gone, and man is garbage.

Chapter 42: Yossarian

Major Danby visits Yossarian in the hospital to tell him that the deal is still on with Cathcart, but Yossarian tells him he cannot accept it now. Danby tells him they will court-martial him if he refuses, but Yossarian says he will run away instead. Danby almost has Yossarian convinced that there is no hope in running when Chaplain Tappman comes in with the electrifying news that Orr is not dead; he paddled in his life raft all the way to Sweden. Yossarian realizes that everything Orr had done—ditching his plane in the sea repeatedly, asking Yossarian to fly with him—had been preparation for his escape. Yossarian leaps from his bed and says he is going to Sweden, too. Danby and the chaplain tell him he will never make it, but Yossarian dashes from the ward. Just outside the door, Nately's whore tries to stab him, missing him by inches, and Yossarian takes off.

THEMES

Survival

Yossarian is perhaps the most famous example in American literature of an antihero, a protagonist whose qualities are the opposite of the traditional brave and selfless wartime hero, who is willing to risk death and injury for his country or for a cause. Instead, Yossarian holds one principle above all others, and that is survival, in particular, his own. This is clear from the first chapter, when he has checked himself into the hospital with a fictional liver ailment in order to avoid combat. Even before he is shipped overseas, he is afraid of dying. He hopes that the war will end before he has to go into combat. Yossarian is not necessarily a coward. On one early raid, he shows initiative and bravery, taking the squadron in a second pass over the target, but he loses his nerve for good after the raid over Avignon, when Snowden is killed. He spends most of the book pleading with everyone—his superior officers, Doc Daneeka, his friends Clevinger and Dobbs—to relieve him from combat and send him home. His reaction to the war is not a political or moral one; he never expresses any doubt about the necessity of the war or of defeating the Nazis. He simply does not understand why he has to be the one to risk his life, when there are plenty of others who have not flown as many missions as he has. Yossarian comes to think of everyone who puts his life in danger, especially the officers of his own army, as the enemy.

Heroism and Leadership

The entire book, not just the character of Yossarian, turns on its head the whole concept of heroes and leaders. Throughout Catch-22, most of the personnel of the Army Air Force are depicted as foolish, inept, self-serving, or corrupt. Rank does not matter: nearly everybody from ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen to General Peckem is more concerned with improving his own status and comfort than with fighting the war. Major Major Major Major is utterly inept. He is so afraid of leading that he makes a rule that no one can see him when he is in his office. They can only see him when he is not there. Colonel Cathcart is obsessed with impressing his superior officers and with getting his picture in the Saturday Evening Post, an important popular magazine of the time; he endangers his own men to do so, constantly raising the number of missions they must fly before they can be rotated out of combat. The only really competent officer in the book, Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder, is also the most corrupt, trading with anyone, even the enemy, and using the men and materiel of the Army Air Force to make himself rich. He even makes a deal with the Germans to bomb his own air base. The most decent and compassionate character in the book, Chaplain A. T. Tappman, is also the most ineffectual, and he is never more ineffectual than when he is trying to do the right thing. He is only really happy when he starts to lie and cheat like everyone else, checking himself into the hospital with a fictional ailment, as Yossarian does in Chapter 1.

Violence and Death

The dark undercurrent of Catch-22 is the constant threat of violent injury and death. Though the book is not especially graphic in its depiction of violence, the threat of sudden death is in the background of nearly every scene. Death, when it happens, is sudden and unexpected, such as when two bombers collide in the raid over La Spezia, and Nately, Dobbs, and ten other men are killed in an instant. Even the comic scenes have a grim undercurrent, such as the scene in which Yossarian shows up naked to receive a medal because his uniform was soaked in Snowden's blood. Snowden's death, in fact, is at the root of Yossarian's fear of dying and at the heart of the book's moral outrage at the savage waste of war. The scene is repeated throughout the book like the tolling of a bell, showing a little more detail each time. In the final flashback, when Yossarian opens Snowden's flak jacket and the gunner's viscera spill out, Yossarian comes to realize: "The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all."

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Literary Responses to World War II

The response by writers to the Second World War was different than the response of an earlier generation of writers to the First World War. After its conclusion in 1918, World War I was almost universally considered by writers and artists to have had a catastrophic effect on culture and civilization, rendering old ways of seeing the world obsolete. There were a couple of important literary responses to the changes wrought by the war. One was the rise of the literary movement known as modernism, as seen in such works as James Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922), Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway (1925), and T. S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land" (1922). Such works radically altered the way stories were told and delved more deeply than earlier works into the consciousness of their characters and of the time. Another important literary response after the war was the publication of a number of grimly realistic works which, unlike earlier works, not only refused to glorify war but expressed bitterness and even rage at the waste and futility of the war. These included the poems of British poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, the novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) by German writer Erich Maria Remarque, the memoir Goodbye to All That (1929) by British writer Robert Graves, and the novel A Farewell to Arms (1929) by American writer Ernest Hemingway. The modernist movement and the series of brutally realistic war literature had a profound effect on subsequent literature.

World War I was supposed to be "the war to end all wars," but only twenty years later came World War II, an even more catastrophic conflict. The literary response, however, was more subdued and less artistically radical than the works that followed the earlier war. In part, this was because World War II was considered to be a good—or at least a necessary—war compared to World War I. The novels that followed World War II showed the hardship of combat but did not question the necessity of defeating the Nazis and Japanese imperialism. Within a few years of the war's end in 1945, a number of powerful, realistic novels by combat veterans appeared, including James Jones's From Here to Eternity (1951), Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny (1951), and Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead (1948). Adding to this subdued response were the political tensions of the McCarthy era, when many people were jailed or driven from their jobs for radical political beliefs, and the tensions of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, with its underlying threat of a devastating nuclear war. It was in this context of weariness from two world wars in thirty years and fear for the future that Catch-22 took a radical new approach to World War II and its aftermath.

Satire, Black Comedy, and the Literature of the Absurd

Postwar tensions were expressed culturally in several ways. One response was the rise of the noir (French for "black") novel and film, dark crime stories that featured morally confused characters, a cynical approach to such institutions as law enforcement and business, and unhappy endings, in the works of writers like Americans Jim Thompson and Patricia Highsmith and French novelist Georges Simenon. At the same time, the group of writers known as the Beats, such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs, began to publish avant-garde works that rejected ordinary, middle-class American life. This postwar cynicism was perhaps most vividly expressed by a new generation of satirists, who wrote what came to be known as black humor. Stand-up comedians such as Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, and Dick Gregory began to talk about politics, sex, and race in their routines, and writers like Terry Southern, Jules Feiffer, and Bruce Jay Friedman began to write wildly satirical books that attacked what they considered to be the lies and hypocrisy of mainstream culture.

At the same time, a long-standing European tradition of dark comedy and absurdism was becoming more widely read in America. This tradition included such works as the novel The Trial (1925) by Franz Kafka, the novel The Good Soldier Svejk (1923) by Jaroslav Hasek, the play Waiting for Godot (1952) by Samuel Beckett, and the novel Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov, all of which took darkly comic or absurd approaches to such topics as justice, military service, and sexual obsession. In 1959, this approach was finally applied to World War II in the novel The Tin Drum, by the German author Guünter Grass, followed two years later by the absurdist comedy of Catch-22. Although the book was set during the war, Catch-22 was also intended as a critique of the fifteen years of postwar American life. In its portrayal of cynical officers such as Colonel Cathcart and General Peckem, the book satirized the corruption of large institutions. It criticized corporate capitalism in the person of Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder. These aspects of the book, along with its harrowing depiction of the terrors of combat, put Catch-22 in the forefront of a cultural movement that reached its peak in the 1960s, with such novels as Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), Thomas Pynchon's V (1963), and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and such films as Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964) and Mike Nichols's The Graduate (1967). The influence of Catch-22 came full circle when The Graduate's director and screenwriter, Mike Nichols and Buck Henry, went on to make the film of Catch-22 in 1970.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW

Simon & Schuster published Catch-22 in 1961. The novel immediately drew strong responses from reviewers. Some were baffled by its unusual structure and wild humor, and some were deeply outraged. One offended anonymous reviewer in Daedalus called the book "worthless" and stated that "its author cannot write." Most reviews, however, were glowing. Novelist Nelson Algren wrote in the Nation: "This novel is not merely the best American novel to come out of World War II; it is the best American novel that has come out of anywhere in years." Other important critics agreed. Orville Prescott, the reviewer for the New York Times, called it "a dazzling performance that will probably outrage nearly as many readers as it delights." Critic Robert Brustein, in an influential early essay in the New Republic, argued that the book was about more than just the air war in World War II and that the island of Pianosa was "a satirical microcosm for many of the macrocosmic idiocies of our time." He praised Yossarian's "anarchic idealism" and argued that his "obsessive concern for survival makes him not only not morally dead, but one of the most morally vibrant figures in recent literature."

In spite of the widespread praise, the book did not make the bestseller lists, selling only thirty-five thousand copies during its first year of publication. After Dell published the paperback in October 1962, however, the book sold two million copies in a year, with eight million in print by 1971. In the words of Robert Merrill in his book Joseph Heller, Catch-22 is "now widely recognized as one of the most important books written by an American since World War II." It is regularly taught in high school and college courses, and its title has entered the language as a metaphor for an inherently paradoxical situation.

Catch-22 was widely reassessed on the occasion of Heller's death in 1999. In his 1964 essay, "The Best Catch There Is," Norman Podhoretz called Catch-22 "one of the bravest and most nearly successful attempts we have yet to describe and make credible the incredible reality of American life in the middle of the 20th century." Thirty-five years later, after Heller's death, however, he accused the novel of contributing to the antimilitary attitude of the culture since the 1960s, and wondered if Heller's "literary achievement was worth the harm—the moral, spiritual, and intellectual harm—Catch-22 has also undoubtedly managed to do." Responding to Podhoretz in "Reassessing Catch-22," Sanford Pinsker agrees that any World War II novel that fails to acknowledge that the real enemy in World War II was not Milo Minderbinder or ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen "begs for moral reassessment." But he concludes by saying that Catch-22 "has earned its place as a classic of American humor … If Catch-22 is a shade less than the perfect novel that Heller's eulogists blathered on about, it is surely one helluva book."

CRITICISM

Sanford Pinsker

In the following excerpt, Pinsker argues that the comic excess of Catch-22 is essential to its success. He also argues that the book stands in a uniquely American tradition of dissent against hypocrisy.

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS

Catch-22, directed by Mike Nichols from a screenplay by Buck Henry, was released as a film by Paramount in 1970. The film stars Alan Arkin as Yossarian, and the cast includes Orson Welles, Bob Newhart, Anthony Perkins, Art Garfunkel, Martin Sheen, and Jon Voight. It is available on DVD from Paramount Home Video, with a commentary track by director Nichols and the filmmaker Steven Soderbergh.

Catch-22 has been released in several different unabridged versions on audiocassette, and in an abridged version narrated by Alan Arkin, who starred as Yossarian in the 1970 film version. All of them are out of print.

Even those who did not bother to turn a single page of Catch-22 got the general idea—namely, that a ubiquitous, altogether scary "they" was out to kill John Yossarian, the novel's beleaguered jittery protagonist. As one fall-down, darkly comic episode after another makes clear, patriotic twaddle is inextricably tied to military careerism—and always with the same deadly result. Jump into the novel anywhere, and you'll find the enemy wearing an American uniform and acting foolishly ("Men," Colonel Cargill confidently exclaims, "you're American officers. The officers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it"). And that perhaps is the point, for Catch-22 is hardly an example of the exquisitely crafted, probingly subtle Jamesian novel; rather, its repetitions (and repetitiousness?) work in roughly the same way that rapid-fire shpritz did for the comedian Lenny Bruce. Oceans of words washed across their respective audiences, overwhelming whatever objections to the material they might have had. Bruce enjoyed holding the feet of his with-it liberal fans to the fire while Heller engaged in a nonstop war against, well, war.

The trick, of course, is to get people to clap their hands raw if you are a stand-up comedian, and to turn the page, and then the next one, if you happen to be a writer. For Heller and Bruce, excess—usually fueled by moral indignation—came with the territory. The usual niceties, whether they be of literary convention or comic decorum, no longer mattered. Instead, the uncompromising truth (what Bruce, reverting to Yiddish, liked to call the emiss) was everything.

Yossarian's wacky persistence makes him a special case. Given his self-styled role as the one sane man in an insane world, it is hardly surprising that he is written off as a nut case—by the top brass as well as by many of his fly-boy buddies. When the required number of bombing missions begins to rise exponentially, there is every reason to resist, at least so far as Yossarian is concerned. He does this in any number of bizarre ways—by secretly moving bombing lines on a map; by going naked to a ceremony in which he is to receive a medal; by marching backward; and ultimately by refusing to fight.

That we first meet Yossarian in a hospital is significant because that is, one presumes, where the wounded and the sick are healed, and where his ambivalent liver causes so much consternation: "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." The grim truth, of course, is that, in Catch-22, one can die just as easily in a hospital as anywhere else. (Witness the ill-fated "soldier in white.") Nonetheless Yossarian takes a certain amount of pride in the reprieves from flying that his odd liver (temporarily) buy him. Nothing, after all, unsettles rigid bureaucratic minds more than an aberration lodging stubbornly between the cracks and just beyond the grip of rules. Yossarian's near-jaundice is a tiny but telling example. He spends as much time as possible in the hospital, not only because the meals are better there and because he can flirt with the nurses, but mostly because there he is safe.

Most of his energy, however, is taken up in efforts to make a case that somebody else should fly the missions that just might kill him. Yossarian blames his sad fate on the greedy (consider a case in point, Milo Minderbinder, who turns war-profiteering into an empire). Nearly anybody in the top brass is also greedy. All of this puts Yossarian squarely in the American grain, and Heller is the narrating presence that pits Self against Society, the pure-of-heart against the thoroughly corrupt. One thinks of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, of Mark Twain and Ralph Ellison—each in his way asking us to identify with, and cheer on, the underdog.

Heller, in short, belongs to this great American tradition of dissent, even as he extends it by changing the essential arithmetic that once came with the war novel. Instead of giving us a naive romantic protagonist who learns that war is not what recruitment posters advertise (as Hemingway shows in A Farewell to Arms), Yossarian steps onto center stage knowing the existential fact about battle: the enemy wants to kill you. But in the same way Norman Mailer once remarked that it is hard to imagine a novel which begins with a naked woman in Macy's window—his point being where do you possibly go from there?—what is one to say of a protagonist who has long antennae out for threats to his survival? Part of Heller's indisputable achievement is that he makes Yossarian interesting for as long as he does; another part is that Heller understands the alternating currents of paranoia better than most. Granted, some of Yossarian's fears are as unfounded as they are funny, but many are not. Like his nearly jaundiced liver Yossarian lives in the ambivalent middle.

Source: Sanford Pinsker, "Reassessing Catch-22," in Sewanee Review, Vol. 108, No. 4, October-December 2000, pp. 602-610.

James Webb

In the following essay on the occasion of Heller's death, Webb, a Vietnam veteran and former secretary of the Navy, offers a combat veteran's appreciation of Catch-22.

It has been more than 30 years since I read Catch-22, but when I learned that Joseph Heller had died on Sunday, the book sprang back at me with a startling vividness. Yossarian in the hospital, censoring letters according to his own random formulas. Major Major, promoted because of his name. Milo Minderbinder, the cunning soldier turned war profiteer who eventually took advantage of both sides' war weariness by staging an entire battle for a fee. The hilariously inventive schemes to beat the system and come out of the war alive. The quietly tragic moments of death, on the bombing runs and again on the tranquil, protected beaches of their home base when an aircraft goes astray. One can debate many issues regarding the novel and the war it portrayed, but its lasting greatness is beyond dispute.

I actually read the novel twice, with stunningly different impacts.

Shortly after Catch-22 went into paperback, it moved through my high school near Offut Air Force Base, Neb., like wildfire. We were mostly Air Force brats, born just after World War II, raised on the stories of heroes and legends, many of whom were our own fathers. Our weekly television fare was heavy with the war's retelling, including such popular series as "Air Power" and "Victory at Sea."

We were fiercely proud of our fathers and of the role our country had played in the war. And yet the novel captured for us a humanity that was otherwise difficult to penetrate, and through its deliberate absurdity it gave us an understanding of how terrifying it is for anyone—no matter how brave, no matter how good the cause—to repeatedly place himself at risk in service of a higher ideal.

And in this sense many critics and fellow writers are wrong when they claim that the book's greatness was that it somehow anticipated wars that followed World War II. Alfred Kazin in his Bright Book of Life: American Novelists and Storytellers From Hemingway to Mailer, wrote that Heller's novel "is really about the Next War, and thus about a war which will be without limits and without meaning, a war that will end when no one is alive to fight it." But Catch-22's greatest power was that it took the ultimately justifiable war and stripped away cant and hypocrisy from the telling of how difficult it is to serve.

Great literature confronts comfortably held notions, and in the aftermath of the bloodletting and tragedies of World War II the national mindset was nothing short of adamant in its insistence on the fatalistic bravado with which our soldiers had faced death—and never mind that two-thirds of those who served were draftees. (By contrast, two thirds of those who served in Vietnam were volunteers.)

Catch-22 laughed happily at this view. Heller's novelistic choice of absurdity over irony was the most effective way to make a point without demeaning true sacrifice or insulting our national goals. His grand and comical imagination took those of us born just after the war behind the newsreels and the stiff remembrances into the minds of individuals being impelled, often against their will, by historical events.

Heller was telling us that it's easy to believe in a cause, especially if someone else is dying for it, but that beyond politics and high-blown speeches the human mind is clever, innovative and laced tightly to the genetic code that has allowed our species to survive. It is for this reason, I believe, that the novelist Nelson Algren called Catch-22 "the best American novel to come out of World War II."

I read Catch-22 again in June 1969. I was sitting underneath an umbrella-like lean-to I had fashioned out of my Marine Corps poncho to protect me from the 100-degree head in a windless, treeless, sandy peninsula known as Go Noi Island. We had been drinking bad water for months and I had only recently overcome a case of hook-worm. I smelled so bad that when I fell asleep my own body odor woke me up.

In a few weeks I would be wounded and after being picked up by a medevac I would learn that I had dropped more than 30 pounds in four months. Typical of the Marine Corps experience in Vietnam—a war that produced five times as many dead Marines as World War I, three times as many as in Korea, and more total Marine casualties than even World War II—my rifle platoon had been frequently chewed up. Two of my original three squad leaders were dead, the other shot through the gut. I was on my third platoon sergeant and my fourth radio operator, who in a few days would be shot, to be replaced by a fifth, who a few weeks after that would lose an arm.

I had just received a letter from a Naval Academy roommate, posted from his minesweeper's liberty port in Mallorca. It was filled with well-intentioned politics, telling me how important it was that the war go on until we won, then remarking about how nice the Mediterranean was at that time of year, and at the end reminding me that he had been promoted to lieutenant junior grade, three months before I would reach first lieutenant. I found myself wishing I could strangle my roommate, or at least send him out on a long patrol with four canteens of wormy water while I was transported for an evening to Mallorca.

Then I looked across our sun-baked, bombcratered company perimeter and saw a fellow platoon commander running toward me. He was laughing uncontrollably, waving a book in the air. He crawled underneath my poncho hooch and held the book in front of me, open at a favorite page.

"Read this!" he said, unable to stop laughing. "Read it!"

He handed me Catch-22. I found the place his finger had marked and began reading. I was suddenly in the midst of World War II. Yossarian was at a bar, getting drunk, arguing with his fellow airmen about the war. "Who is the enemy?" he was persistently asking them. Of course we knew who the enemy was in World War II. But as with so much in Heller's masterpiece, Yossarian had a different answer. And for those who must do the fighting in any war, it rang timeless: "The enemy is anybody who shoots at you. And anybody who sends you out to get shot at."

In the next few days I devoured the book again. It mattered not to me that Joseph Heller was then protesting the war in which I was fighting, and it matters not a whit to me today. In his book, from that lonely place of blood and misery and disease, I found a soul mate who helped me face the next day and all the days and months that followed. His message was not that his war or mine was either good or bad. It was that all wars dehumanize. That few soldiers march happily to their fate. And that once the bullets start to fly, all battlefields become apolitical. For while there may be few atheists in a foxhole, there are even fewer politicians.

Literature remains the best mechanism to explain such anomalies. And great novels, unlike their authors, live on and on.

Source: James Webb, "The Novelist Who Put a Human Face on War," in the Wall Street Journal, December 15, 1999, p. A22.

SOURCES

Aldridge, John A., "Catch-22 Twenty-Five Years Later," in Michigan Quarterly Review, Vol. 26, No. 2, Spring 1987, pp. 379-80.

Algren, Nelson, "The Catch," in A "Catch-22" Casebook, edited by Frederick Kiley and Walter McDonald, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1973, p. 5; originally published in The Nation, Vol. 193, November 4, 1961, p. 358.

Anonymous, "A Review: Catch-22," in A "Catch-22" Casebook, edited by Frederick Kiley and Walter McDonald, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1973, pp. 27-28; originally published in Daedalus, Vol. 92, Winter 1963, pp. 155-65.

Bradbury, Malcolm, "Introduction," in Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, Everyman's Library edition, Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, pp. vii-xviii.

Brustein, Robert, "The Logic of Survival in a Lunatic World," in A "Catch-22" Casebook, edited by Frederick Kiley and Walter McDonald, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1973, pp. 9, 11; originally published in the New Republic, Vol. 145, November 13, 1961, pp. 11-13.

Heller, Joseph, Catch-22, Everyman's Library edition, Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, pp. 20, 56-57, 145, 280, 378, 536, 545.

??????, "Joseph Heller's Preface to the 1994 Edition of Catch-22," in Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, Everyman's Library edition, Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, pp. 563, 564, 567.

Merrill, Robert, Joseph Heller, Twayne Publishers, 1987, pp. 1, 3, 9.

Pinsker, Sanford, "Reassessing Catch-22," in Sewanee Review, Vol. 108, No. 4, p. 611.

Podhoretz, Norman, "The Best Catch There Is," in A "Catch-22" Casebook, edited by Frederick Kiley and Walter McDonald, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1973, p. 237; originally published in Doings and Undoings, by Norman Podhoretz, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1964, pp. 228-35.

??????, "Looking Back at Catch-22," in Commentary, Vol. 109, No. 2, February 2000, p. 32.

Ruderman, Judith, Joseph Heller, Continuum, 1991, pp. 13-20.

Scoggins, Michael C., "Joseph Heller's Combat Experiences in Catch-22," in War, Literature and the Arts, Vol. 15, Nos. 1/2, 2003, pp. 214, 215.