The Night Journey in Catch-22

Abstract

Sanford Pinsker in his article on Catch-22 characterizes Heller's hero as a puer eternis.1 As a result, he sees Yossarian refusing the traditional journey of learning in manhood, 2 and the ending of the novel becomes Yossarian's escape from reality to Sweden, a kind of never-never land. Although Yossarian may be innocent, as Mr. Pinsker claims, at the beginning of the novel, and his belief that he can work within the establishment using their rules for his own ends is incredibly naive, he does, I believe, learn better, and after his symbolic journey to the underworld, represented by his trip through the dark streets of Rome, he comes to a new recognition of the meaning of his experience and reaches a new knowledge in the hospital after his near death, achieving what one could perhaps call an informed innocence. His flight to Sweden is not an escape but an alternative as he himself tells us: not running away from my responsibilities. I'm running to them. 3 Thus, a definite and meaningful pattern of action emerges from the novel, and one which is startlingly similar to the archetypal pattern that characterizes classical epic or romance. Heller's hero, like those of The Odyssey, The Aeneid and The Divine Comedy, is involved in a struggle with an alien force which he must and eventually does overcome in order to survive. He too reaches a crisis in his struggle, undertakes a journey to the underworld, emerges with new knowledge, and is finally victorious, prevailing against the forces marshalled against him. From the outset of the novel, Yossarian struggles against a hostile establishment and the code it maintains for controlling the society it rules, that is, Catch-22, the principleof power which states they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing. (416) However, the confrontation reaches its climax and emerges most clearly and intensely in the night journey episode of the last chapters, and in the action t at follows from it. A close analysis of these chapters (39-42) will show how Yossarian through his participation in the archetypal pattern of the descent and renewal of the romance hero achieves his new perception which culminates quite logically in his flight to Sweden: When Yossarian goes AWOL to R e in an attempt to save the kid sister of Nately's whore, we witness a crisis in his continuous battle with th establishment. In his previous conflicts with those forces, Yossarian was consistently foiled by 'Catch-22.' However, his absolute and unconditional refusal to fly any more mis-