One of the founding works of antirealist or postmodern fiction, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 realizes an important aim of such writing: It renders a world through its language. Minimally drawn from Heller’s own experience as a bombardier in World War II (Heller, stationed in Corsica, flew 60 missions), the novel takes place on the fictional island of Pianosa and dramatizes the experiences of a cadre of soldiers, officers, support staff, and nurses stationed there. Catch-22 initially reads as nearly incomprehensible because Heller’s style, characterized by repetitive phrasing, rapid-fire slapstick dialogue, fragmented narrative, and cinematic jumps in time and space, demands studied attention and ample time for acculturation. Once the reader becomes familiar with it, however, the novel provides opportunity to consider the natures of patriotism and war, capitalism and human greed, the role of religion, and the loss of individuality in the overarching systems of the modern world. In the “New Preface” to the 1994 Scribner paperback edition, Heller describes the novel’s relatively slow genesis and meteoric rise to fame upon its discovery by the public. Forty years after its publication, Catch-22 remains required reading at many American universities and its title has become a well-known idiom in English for describing sticky situations which offer no pleasant option for escape.
When extracted from its nonlinear presentation, the plot follows the military career of a B-25 bombardier named John Yossarian from his basic training in Colorado, through his flight school in Santa Ana, California, to his deployment to the European front. Ostensibly, the setting is World War II, but the war as described is curiously devoid of specific historical reference and the timeframe of the novel is complicated with references to hallmarks of cold war–era technology, such as IBM and mimeograph machines, or helicopters in military use. Yossarian and his peers serve at the discretion of supervisors motivated entirely by career mobility, and readers learn to make chronological sense of the novel via the ever-increasing number of missions required by the diabolically inane Colonel Cathcart, commander of Yossarian’s division. A series of midair misadventures, coupled with the escalating mortality rates of his compeers, convinces Yossarian to find a means to avoid missions or to transfer home. Catch-22 describes the various attempts Yossarian makes to get out of service, including faking illness, altering maps of unconquered territory, walking backwards or naked through the base camp, and refusing to fly.
Critics tend to focus primarily on Catch-22’s black comedy as the vehicle whereby Heller makes known his attitude towards his subject matter. Clearly, many of the novel’s characters resonate as so absurd as to risk the text’s indictments of the systems they represent. The chaplain, A. T. Tappman, has difficulty believing in God and in helping the soldiers confront their existential insecurities; the camp doctor, Doc Daneeka, is a hypochondriac seized by self-pity and fear of death; and the mess hall supervisor, Milo Minderbinder, forms a pervasive ‘syndicate’ in which various subordinates interweave a profiteering web that produces serious, often deadly, results for its members, whom Milo insists all own a share.
Despite their idiosyncrasies, the characters gradually earn the reader’s admiration and love, so when they are killed, a sense of paranoia and hopelessness replaces what the reader initially sees as humorous absurdity. This paranoia replicates that hitherto exhibited by Yossarian, “They’re trying to kill me!” he often complains, vocalizing his desire to escape the war. As a result, what previously may have been read as his cowardice increasingly appears as what we might call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (“shell-shock” in World War II).
The cumulative process through which the reader discerns Yossarian’s disdain for the war matches Heller’s heightening of the violence in the novel. Yossarian increasingly reacts to his surroundings in a hostile manner. Whereas once he retreated from conflict by entering the hospital, Yossarian begins to respond aggressively by belittling his friends in strings of invectives, and in one scene, by seizing McWatt by the throat and threatening to strangle him for his frenetic flying methods. One Thanksgiving, soldiers frighten Yossarian when in a drunken stupor they accidentally fire their machine guns. Yossarian fires back at them and punches his best friend, Nately, in the nose when Nately tries to stop him.
The culmination of this trajectory of increasing violence occurs in Chapter 39, entitled “The Eternal City.” In this chapter, Yossarian goes AWOL in Rome and witnesses various forms of brutality being inflicted upon the weak: dogs, children, and women. In each scene, narrated in surreal fashion, representatives of military or police law fail to protect the innocent, or worse, perpetrate the crimes. Yossarian’s witnessing of these events signifies not only the inefficacy of systems meant to prevent atrocity, but also the devastating effects of war on noncombatants. As a retreat, Yossarian ducks into the private apartments kept for soldiers on leave to find that his compatriot, Aarfy, has just hurled a prostitute named Michaela out the window to her death. Aarfy’s nonchalance, despite Yossarian’s protest that he “murdered a human being” (428), shows how wartime acceptance of brutality and killing permeates the entire culture and disrupts standards of moral action.
Yossarian’s refusal to excuse Aarfy’s actions demonstrates that, despite Yossarian’s own untoward responses to situations, he maintains a moral compass. The reader may not understand Yossarian’s personal damage, however, until the novel’s penultimate chapter, “Snowden.” In a tour-de-force of emotionally charged, suspenseful writing, the chapter offers a full account of the death of Snowden, the details of which have slowly been revealed previously. As Snowden’s guts slither across the floor, Yossarian realizes that “Man was matter. . . . The spirit gone, man is garbage” (450). Given the early occurrence of this event in the novel’s chronology, Yossarian’s refusal either to lose his spirit (or his life) in the insanity of war, or to be treated as matter by the military, enables the reader to view him as heroic, instead of as a whining soldier who shirks his duty. His escape at novel’s end, despite any questions about loyalty that arise, emerges as the only appropriate response to his “Catch-22.”
Sources
Heller, Joseph. Catch-22. New York: Scribner, 1961.
Merrill, Robert. Joseph Heller. Boston: Twayne, 1987.
Potts, Stephen W. Catch-22: Antiheroic Antinovel. Boston: Twayne, 1989.
Seed, David. The Fiction of Joseph Heller: Against the Grain. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989.
Woods, Tim. Beginning Postmodernism. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1999.