Yossarian: Ok, let me see if I've got this straight. In order to be grounded, I've got to be crazy. And I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I'm not crazy anymore, and I have to keep flying. `
Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: You got it, that's Catch-22.
Yossarian: Whoo... That's some catch, that Catch-22.
Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: It's the best there is.
In this classic extract the star of Catch-22 is confounded by military policy as he desperately seeks a way to avoid flying any more sorties as a fighter pilot.
Set in World War II, Catch-22 is a surreal anti-war satire set on a fictional island called Pianosa, which is somewhere between Italy and Corsica. A bombardier in the 256th squadron of the Army Air Forces, Yossarian does his utmost to avoid military action and get sent home – always to no avail.
Although Yossarian is the main protagonist, the focus switches between numerous characters, all with their own idiosyncrasies. Dunbar, for example, tries to live as boring an existence as possible to make life last longer. Then there’s Orr, who tries all manner of ways to escape the war, including crash-landing in a neutral country and seeing out the rest of the war there. The chaplain, a kind, sensitive man assailed by self-doubt who is forever incurring the wrath or contempt of people around him. That such a virtuous, inoffensive character as the chaplain should annoy so many people in the story is typical of how the book inverts the world.
The book is full of ‘Catch-22s’, and Yossarian’s attempts to get sent home are forever foiled because of them. He is entitled to go home once he has reached a certain number of missions, but Colonel Cathcart raises the number of missions he has to fly every time he reaches the target, and since he cannot disobey a commanding officer, the rule about mission targets is rendered meaningless.
Yossarian becomes increasingly exasperated by the situation, and he becomes increasingly hysterical and paranoid. But is he really being hysterical and paranoid? In the following passage it might, on the face of it, seem like he is. But then again, what he is alleging is actually perfectly true, and the worst-case consequence of it – death – would tend to warrant an extreme reaction.
"They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.
"No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.
"Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.
"They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone."
"And what difference does that make?"
Typical of the paradox that recurs throughout the novel, Yossarian is at once paranoid yet not paranoid at all.
Madness of war
Clevinger’s response demonstrates how the conventional rules of society are suspended, how killing becomes normal and amoral. Yossarian has survival instincts like any other living thing, and sees that being dead is the same end whether the means is through war, or through a traffic accident or illness. "It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead," he remarks darkly on one occasion.
The genius of Yossarian is that he doesn’t see why he should look at the world any less critically or bypass his natural instinct just because there’s a war on. Peacetime or at war, to him death is horrendous and something to be avoided at all costs. Through Yossarian’s eyes war is revoked its special status, the exemptions from normal moral standards and rational judgment (which make it such a great pretext for governments pushing through authoritarian legislation).
Yossarian’s intractable desire to get out of the war unsettles his superiors. "What could you do with a man who looked you squarely in the eye and said he would rather die than be killed in combat, a man who was at least as mature and intelligent as you were and who you had to pretend was not? What could you say to him?" wonders Major Major. Major Major is troubled by Yossarian’s truculence and the fact that he cannot come up with a good reason why he should carry on flying missions demonstrates the fundamental madness of war, a prevailing theme throughout the book. What if everyone on the allies side said they didn’t want to fight anymore, asks Major Major, convinced he has the killer argument. "Then I’d be a damn fool to feel any other way, wouldn’t I?" is Yossarian’s pithy response.
Yossarian is inured to appeals to patriotic duty. "What is a country?" he asks. "A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for."
Like Yossarian, Milo Minderbinder, mess officer of the US Army Aircorps, judges war by the same norms he would in his regular life. Yet far from seeing war as a threat to his life, he sees it as a great big business opportunity. Milo wants to "see the government go out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry." This resonates given that everything, from uniforms and food to weaponry, used in war represents contracts to private firms for whom war is a boon.
Milo is like all those arms manufacturers who sell to anyone as long as they have the money. He has a contract with the Americans to bomb a German-held bridge, even though he has a contract with the Germans to defend it. Characteristic of the twisted logic of the book (and of arms sales in real life), he reasons that because the battle would go ahead whether he was involved or not, he might as well make some money out of it.
Milo is court-martialled for helping the Germans, but when he discloses the huge profits the company has made, which are shared between the squadron, he is excused. Circular logic again wins the day as the military court agrees with his company’s slogan: "What's good for M&M enterprises is good for the country."
For long periods Heller seems unable to take anything seriously. Yet despite being relentlessly silly, the book still somehow conveys the horror of war – which itself is a classic Heller paradox. For example: "There was no established procedure for evasive action. All you needed was fear and Yossarian had plenty of that." And: "History did not demand Yossarian's premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; which men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war."
Catch-22 is a strange book. It took me a couple of chapters before something clicked into place and I really got to grips with the outlandish humour. Thereafter however I loved it – so be patient.
I’ve found that people tend to either love it or hate it. If Catch-22 were a condiment, it would definitely be Marmite, which is ironic, because Marmite is a bit of a paradox itself: it tastes disgusting, yet somehow, twiglets seem to work…
