"I See Everything Twice": An Examination of Catch-22

Abstract

had a very hard time reading I started it about five times and then finally got all the way through it. hard work. thick -like eating fruitcake. This first impression of a man who has just completed Joseph Heller's novel is typical of the reaction of most people to that long, complicated work. Unlike most contemporary novels, Catch-22 is massive. It is over 400 pages long and it has almost 50 characters, with a profusion of detail about each one. worse still, Heller has structured his novel in loops or circles, making characters appear for a page or two and then vanish during what seems like one long, incoherent nightmare. Catch-22 is set on the island of Pianosa, a tiny dot off the west coast of Italy between Elba and Corsica, where the Army Air Corps maintains a bomber squadron during World War II. More specifically, Catch-22 is the story of bombardier Captain Yossarian who is really the only sane member of the squadron (or crazy member-depending on one's point of view). Dead tired from flying endless missions (the required number is always raised, every time he becomes eligible for stateside leave, by the evil Colonel Cathcart) Yossarian one day decides to go crazy. He checks with Doc Daneeka, the flight surgeon, who agrees that he has to ground anyone who is crazy; all one has to do is ask. And then you can ground him? Yossarian asks. No. Then I can't ground him. You mean there's a catch? Sure there's a Doc Daneeka replies, Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazv. Yossarian, deeply impressed by the pure simplicity of it all, observes, That's some catch, that Catch-22. It's the best there is, Doc Daneeka agrees. The whole novel is filled with this type of crazy, scrambled episode about Yossarian's herculean efforts to keep from getting killed. Yossarian uses any means he can-defiance, cowardice, caution, deceit-faking a liver condition, standing naked in formation, marching backward in parades, putting soap flakes in the officers' mashed potatoes-just so he can avoid that all-pervading catch, and stay alive in the process. Yossarian's companions on Pianosa include Col nel Korn who is Colonel Cathcart's echo; Chaplain Tappman who keeps Yossarian company in the hospital; Major Major Major Major (the last three are names, the first is a rank) who will only see people in his office when he is not there himself; General Dreedle, who gives Yossarian a medal for dropping bombs in the ocean; Yossarian's pilot, Nately, who falls madly in love with a young whore he meets in Rome; Snowdon, Yossarian's gunner, who dies in his arms, besplattering his guts all over like the entrails of a sacrificial lamb; Milo Minderbinder, the mysterious mess officer who operates a purchasing syndicate which covers the whole European theater; and numerous other wild individuals.