Heller's Interviews

Joseph Heller interviewed by Bill Moyers about his life and his work:

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Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

"Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts, and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?"
-Joseph Heller

In this post:

1. WHAT the story is about
2. WHO the characters are
3. MY INTERPRETATION of major themes/events

"One of the most bitterly funny works in the language... explosive, bitter, subversive, brilliant."

-The New Republic

Okay, anything warranting "bitter" twice in a review just HAS to be good. And I figured if this one's over my head, I'd just look up the SparkNotes.

WHAT.
Catch-22 is one of those books that can't be summed up in a sentence. It can't be summed up in a sentence because anyone who's read the book knows that one sentence couldn't sum up everything Catch-22 manages to say in 453 pages, that it couldn't possibly capture things in Catch-22 like the disassembled plot, the contradictory characters, the expansive themes, and that it sure as hell couldn't capture the violence, the sex, the comedy, the drama, or moments like the time Yossarian sat naked in a tree for Snowden's funeral while Milo tried to feed him chocolate covered cotton and the chaplain watched them from afar, wondering if he, the chaplain laying Snowden to rest, was suffering from a great epiphany or great insanity.

...WHAT?!
Yeah, no, that's how it feels like the book starts off. AND IT WAS AWESOME. It does the above except in a way that's edgy and funny, as well as being mildly confusing. Through the chapters, we get to meet the book's extensive cast of characters, most of whom are Air Force bombardiers stationed in Pianosa, Italy [img from wikipedia].

OVERALL. Although the timeline is skewed throughout the book, the events take place during World War II. I don't really know too much on the progress of Allied forces against the Axis powers, but it sounded like most of it took place during various stages of trying to capture northern Italy after Rome had been captured.

But for the most part, the actual war is irrelevant. If that sounds crazy, it's part of the point Heller tried to make. He bases a lot of the characters and the general tone of the book from his own experience as a bombardier during WWII.

The book satirizes the bureaucracy of the military by showing, through the magic of comedy, the oppression lower-ranking men suffer at the hands of their "superiors," including "Catch-22" rules designed to exploit them for the gain of their commanding officers. More often than not, the men are sent on missions that are strategically important to the careers of their commanding officers and have little or nothing to do with strategical importance to the actual war.

WHAT IS CATCH-22? It's pretty much any rule that gives the appearance of offering a choice but in actuality leads to just one end. The main "Catch-22"that so thoroughly affects the oppressed characters is the one that forces them to fly an ever increasing number of missions issued by Colonel Cathcart. If they're sane, they're perfectly good to fly. If they're crazy, they have to be grounded.

The catch is that only someone who isn't crazy would try to get out of combat duty, so by the mere act of trying to get grounded, that person proves they are perfectly sane and therefore can fly. And the only way that any of them can get out of flying is if they try to get grounded by saying they're crazy.

So the end result is that the men all have to fly whatever number of missions Colonel Cathcart requires no matter what. Within this loop of reasoning, there is no escape.

Thus, men that should have been honorably discharged and sent back home after the initial requirement of twenty-five missions find themselves being forced to fly thirty, then thirty-five, then forty, then fifty total missions... and Colonel Cathcart just keeps raising them throughout the book with absolutely no concern of how desperate many of the men become to leave.

HUMOR IN UNIFORM? Well, apparently, this was a lot more shocking when it came out in the 1961. The image of WWII was, and still is, that it was a just and noble war. Disillusionment with the romantic ideals of war and with authority in general wouldn't be in full swing until a decade later, so Heller was making a bold statement at the time. Thus, Catch-22 was met with mixed reviews with critics either loving it or hating often for the exact same reasons. From Heller's preface, though, it sounded like the book got plenty of advertising either way and the publishers had to take it back to the presses a total of eleven times due to popular demand.

If the crazy style the book starts out in makes it seem like a daunting and complicated read, don't worry. The seemingly inane and random approach the book starts out with tapers into rationality as the reader gets to know the occurrences and the people enough to place them into context. More than that, Heller has a style that is abundantly frank in attitude and his pithy word choice offers clear descriptions and judgments.

More than that, he doesn't preach and he doesn't really push to point out any particular vision of he thinks things should be. He manages to cover all these huge themes and concepts, but the book itself is a dark comedy. It critically points things out like a scathing comedian for you to laugh at, and if you get the underlying meanings it just makes the jokes more satisfying.

WHO.
The plot revolves around John Yossarian, a 28-year-old B-25 bombardier and captain of the 256th squadron in the US Air Force, although point of view frequently jumps and drifts between the timelines of many of the characters. The chapters themselves are each named for a character but hardly ever limited to discussing that character.

Yossarian is a self-described coward while everyone else just describes him as crazy. He feels he is the only sane one since he knows people are out to kill him. I feel like I can't do him justice in a summary so I'll use Major Sanderson's, the staff psychiatrist, analysis of Yossarian:

"The trouble with you is that you think you're too good for all the conventions of society. You probably think you're too good for me too, just because I arrived at puberty late. Well, do you know what you are? You're a frustrated, unhappy, disillusioned, undisciplined, maladjusted young man!" Major Sanderson's disposition seemed to mellow as he reeled off the uncomplimentary adjectives.

"Yes sir," Yossarian agreed carefully. "I guess you're right."

"Of course I'm right. You're immature. You've been unable to adjust to the idea of war."

"Yes, sir."

"You have a morbid aversion to dying. You probably resent the fact that you're at war and might get your head blown off any second."

"I more than resent it, sir. I'm absolutely incensed."

"You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs or hypocrites. Subconsciously, there are many people you hate."

"Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously."

"You're antagonistic to the idea of being robbed, exploited, degraded, humiliated or deceived. Misery depresses you. Ignorance depresses you. Persecution depresses you. Violence depresses you. Slums depress you. Greed depresses you. Crime depresses you. Corruption depresses you. You know, it wouldn't surprise me if you're a manic-depressive!"

And even though Yossarian managed to have the psychiatrist diagnose him with split-personality disorder on top of all that, he was unsuccessful in his attempt to get grounded on the basis of insanity (instead, the soldier he was impersonating was released to go home).

The list of characters is pretty big, but the major players include:

SUPERIORS:

• COLONEL CATHCART- One of the more direct and obvious instigators of much of the conflict within the book. He tries to win the favor of both General Dreedle and General Peckham and has no qualms about sacrificing the well-being of his men to achieve it.
  
  I would compare the way Heller portrays Cathcart's ambitious attitude to a maladjusted dog; eager to please his masters for a favor, he runs around with his tail between his leg when he's unsure if he's on the right track and slyly trying to get into their good graces. He's frequently insecure and, like many of the men of power in this book, is quite incompetent so he depends on those below him to get work done (specifically Colonel Korn). He hides this incompetency and insecurity through blatant aggression. Although he depends on Korn so much, he is envious and mistrustful of him.
  
  
• LIEUTENANT COLONEL KORN - Cathcart's right-hand man, he also is intent on currying the favor of the Generals. They both seem like bumblers, but, in the end, Korn is shown as quite formidable as he derides the chaplain and, later, as he and Cathcart manipulate Yossarian into an agreement that will benefit them at the expense of Yossarian's principles. Both he and Cathcart are examples of men with little morals and heaps of narcissistic ambition that are successful in climbing the bureaucratic ladder because of those two traits.
  
  
• GENERAL DREEDLE - To me, he seemed like the more stereotypical military man. Aggressive, frequently drinking, rough, and convinced that the best way to solve any problem is to have the man causing it taken outside and shot. Technically, the men at Pianosa are under his command, but General Peckham has essentially declared bureaucratic war on Dreedle and wants to overtake Dreedle's command.
  
  
• GENERAL PECKHAM - ... has essentially declared bureaucratic war on Dreedle and wants to overtake Dreedle's command [sorry, the humor in repetition is kind of infectious]. He is the polar opposite of Dreedle; well-educated and prim, he seems MADE for any administrative environment and lives to send out prolix memoranda. In fact, he manages to overthrow Dreedle in the end in a purely bureaucratic fashion. Since Peckham and Dreedle are such opposites, I wonder if they represent differing aspects of the military to Heller and how it's perceived by others. That, perhaps once, this military was actually about fighting an outside threat, but now it's about power-grabbing.
  
  
• EX-P.F.C. WINTERGREEN - He's an interesting character from the start as everyone seems to run to him for help. He even pretty much decided one of the earlier bureaucratic skirmishes between Dreedle and Peckham as a mail clerk by throwing away most of Peckham's memoranda for being prolix. I classified him as a "superior" because when Yossarian ran to him for help saying he would just stop flying missions, Wintergreen said "Then we'll have to shoot you." Not "they" but "we." The concept of a great deal of power in a low-level position and Wintergreen's place in it is illuminated at this link to TVtropes.com's Almighty Janitor.
  
  
• [MESS SERGEANT/MAYOR/CEO] MILO MINDERBINDER - Heller's manipulation of this character is something that will probably take me several reads to really get an understanding of. The characters all have their fair share of contradictory behaviors, but Milo seems to take the cake. He and Yossarian frequently call each other very honest and the explanation from Yossarian's point of view is, of course, paradoxical to the point of outright sarcastic.
  
  He becomes capitalism run amok and Heller's descriptions of his economical trades kept pulling to mind P.J. O'Rourke's Eat the Rich. They share a common look at the comedic madness of large-scale production, distribution, and consumption. As O'Rourke said, when comparing public interest in love and death with the lack of interest in economics,"People will do some odd things for political or religious reasons, but that's nothing compared to what people will do for a buck." Milo's irrational rationalization of the things he does for political reasons as well as for a buck eventually reaches Cathcart & Korn's level ("What's good for the syndicate is good for the country."). And even though it's done in an absurdly funny way, the merging of economic interests with the military that escalates throughout the book offers a disturbing picture of corruption and greed
  
  
• CAPTAIN BLACK - Might seem kind of strange to place him in "superiors," but he's one of the people that makes the lives of his "inferiors" suck. In fact, he openly takes pleasure in making sure his men are miserable. He gets positively giddy when he finds out his men have to fly a very dangerous mission with a high expected mortality rate and even goes out of his way to sleep with Nately's beloved whore just knowing it upsets the kid.
  
  He utilizes pointless exercises of bureaucracies and false patriotism to try to further his career like all the other noncombat officers. Like the other noncombat officers, he doesn't really care if it hinders the actual war effort.
  

MIDDLE TIER [Neutral] :

• CHAPLAIN A.T. TAPPMAN - A sensitive and timid man who is awkwardly placed into the military structure in a way that isolates him from everyone. The book frequently makes note of how people that ruthlessly act on narcissistic ambitions thrive while those who are not suffer. The chaplain is an example of someone who gets pushed around by superiors and even his own assistant, Corporal Whitcomb. He's hardly consequential to their individual successes and ambitions (with the exception of Corporal Whitcomb), yet they bully him anyways simply because they can.
  
  Throughout the book, the Chaplain struggles with reconciling his nature, his religion, and his environment. Rather than being a source of power and strength, the Chaplain's religion frequently isolates him and fuels a lot of his apprehensions and fears. Since the basis of faith is that God will take care of things as they should be, the Chaplain doesn't seem to have much faith and he frequently frets for his loved ones and imagines the most horrible things happening to his wife and kids.
  
  
• MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR - This poor jerk is one of my favorite characters out of this book. He apparently resembles Henry Fonda and has a personality I'd liken to the Chaplain. He breaks the stereotype of what a soldier is/should because he's just an average guy. Just replace his uniform with a suit and this guy sounds like another 9-5 employee in the office who screwed over for life by doing everything right.
  
  
• MAJOR DANBY - This character was pretty unobtrusive. Heller didn't spend a lot of time on him so it was surprising that he was there for the final scene with Yossarian and the Chaplain. Still debating whether it means anything or not.
  
  
• MAJOR _____ DE COVERLEY - An enigmatic figure (for God's sake, no one knows his first name) that all the men seem to be in awe of. He seems like another stereotype of a soldier but a more idealized one. Like the other majors, he seems to remain outside the mess of power struggles and corruption. He has a job and he does it, leaving for long periods of time and returning suddenly. I believe at some point during Nately's discussion with the old man, it's speculated that he's disappeared for good.
  
  
• DOC DANEEKA - Doc offers the readers a perspective of a doctor's role in war, a situation that demands death. He frequently points out how he's nothing in Pianosa but he had a lot going for him back home. His statement is exemplified by the fact that he's a powerless and superfluous character, and he can do little for his comrades as they constantly come to him to be grounded. So he spends a lot of time being a hypochondriac and sitting outside his closed tent like a vulture.
  

BOTTOM RUNG:

• CLEVINGER - An idealist. He's a counterpoint to Yossarian's pessimism/realism, and they argue frequently about being at war in the beginning of the book.
  
  
• DUNBAR - Similar to Yossarian in his unabashed cowardice and his opinion of the war. They spend a lot of time in the hospital together faking illness and seem quite close.
  
  
• NATELY - He ends up being an idealist like Clevinger, but Heller doesn't unveil it until the last half of the book when Nately argues with the old man in the brothel.
  
  
• ORR - Goofy sidekick and skilled handyman. He's Yossarian's tent-mate and friend. Yossarian finds him both annoying and endearing, and he worries for his little friend knowing how weird he is and how he wouldn't fit into society back home.
  
  When Yossarian worries about Orr, he speculates how unappreciated Orr's factotum skills would be and how simple yet useful men like him would be abused by the ambitious. In this world of expoitable and exploited, Orr is a symbol of the bottom rung in contrast to ambitious men like Colonels Cathcart and Korn; he's described as having "a thousand valuable skills that would keep him in a low income group all his life."
  
  
• APPLEBY - A talented, good-looking kid from the Midwest that Yossarian can't stand. He seems like a typical ideal young soldier: skilled at following orders and eager to show his bravery. A very solid contrast to Yossarian, Appleby is one of many that calls Yossarian crazy and despises his cowardice. And yet, near the end, Appleby along with other members of the squadron, begin to see the dysfunction Yossarian has been aware of the entire time.
  
  
• SNOWDEN - Pivotal not so much as a character but as an event. It is his death that acts almost as an anchor point to give context to the events and to Yossarian's state of mind. Before witnessing Snowden's death, Yossarian is more like Appleby, Nately, and McWatt: unafraid to fly and believing that what he's doing is good for his country.
  
  
• AARFY - Such a jerk. Former frat boy that does despicable things *SPOILER* like rape little servant girls and then kill them because, "Good old Aarfy's never paid for it in his life." *SPOILER*
  
  

OTHER:

• LUCIANA - I was curious about how women were represented in this book, and I'm often amazed at how the frequent mention of sex in this book is often glossed over in the reviews I've read so far. Heller's treatment of the female characters often bordered on misogynistic, but that was to be expected from the almost misanthropic treatment of the other characters. An interesting note from Free Baron's Booknotes was that WACs (Women's Army Corps) were often seen as "second-class" soldiers by servicemen and stereotyped as promiscuous by civilians, both of which affect how American women (i.e. Dori Duz and Lieutenant Schiesskopf's wife) are portrayed in the book.
  
  The only Italian women that were represented were prostitutes which Heller just openly calls "whores," with the exception of the old woman in the brothel. Luciana actually gets a back story as a woman who was engaged but whose fiancee died and who, herself, had scars from an American air raid. She and Yossarian have an amusing and almost touching back and forth, and he even proposes to her. Yet, he ends it by tearing up the slip of paper with her contact info the minute they parted ways, "feeling very much like a big shot because a beautiful young girl like Luciana had slept with him and did not ask for money," just as Luciana said he would (and he totally regretted it).
  
  The men seem to become more hedonistic the more they are faced with their mortality, especially Yossarian. It's reflected in their zeal for food, sex, trying to preserve their survival, and more sex. The female characters of this book are objects of lust and are shown no respect, but you have to consider it in the context that this book doesn't show respect for anyone. However, I see the division of gender, even with the creation of a women's branch in the Army, and the roles of the women in this book as, at least, telling of the attitudes toward women and their place in society at the time.
  
  
• NATELY'S WHORE - She's pretty much the vehicle of some ongoing joke. First, as the unattainable object of Nately's desire then as an assassin out to get Yossarian. She spends most of the book being passive and apathetic and suddenly switches into a whirlwind of fury and bloodlust when Yossarian delivers bad news towards the end.
  
  
• OLD MAN - This guy owns the brothel the squadron frequents and is the antithesis to the young and idealistic soldier. He's extremely old and has survived Italy's numerous defeats and occupations by zealously supporting whoever is occupying. He was fanatically pro-German when the Germans captured Rome and he's fanatically pro-American now that the Americans occupy it. He's a little like Yossarian if Yossarian went into extreme survival mode and abandoned all love for anything but living to the next day.
  
  He and Nately end up arguing into the night and he pretty much pwns Nately by making Nately's arguments and ideals look completely arbitrary and illogical against the Old Man's anarchistic and nihilistic perspective. The lines between sane and insane thought and rational and irrational logic are blurred in their discussion as the Old Man begins to make more sense than Nately. The really fascinating part of the chapter in which this takes place, "Nately's Old Man," is that this guy kept reminding Nately of his own father. And Nately's father is apparently a wealthy, old-money, New York aristocrat, the complete opposite of this dirty old man.
  

MY INTERPRETATION. The threads of the story seem like they're wildly whipping around at first, but they pull together into a cohesive picture that shows how the absurdity of the entire story has a foundation in the absurd desires of the characters.

If it was just about winning the war, there would be a direct sense of purpose instilled in the characters and in the story itself. But Heller shows us a world in which the assumed enemy, the Germans and the Axis powers, are not as clear and present a danger to the enlisted men as their commanding officers are. Even that statement is glib since the apparent power structure is belied by the fact that the U.S. military is apparently run by the mail clerk and the mess officer.

In the chapter named after him, Peckham remarks, "Somewhere down near the lowest levels of this coordinated organization I run are people who do get the work done when it reaches them, and everything manages to run along smoothly without too much effort on my part." Which pretty much explains why ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, the mail clerk, is essentially running the military.

Peckham is intent on overthrowing Dreedle for nothing but the fact that he is there. He doesn't gain a promotion, really, but since he sees that there are more people he can pull under his command he seems to think it's natural to try to reach out and conquer. Heller embeds this kind of nonsensical rationality in many of these power-seeking characters. Their self-interest, no matter how petty and insignificant, is all that matters and the war is a convenient vehicle through which they try to elevate it.

SO...
Love this book. I had completely underestimated how hilarious, witty, deep, and BITINGLY edgy it really is. I wasn't completely hooked until I got halfway through chapter 4 to the T.S. Eliot bit. I actually lol'd.

Rented the movie although I'm prepared that it won't be the same thing.


HELPFUL REFERENCES:
Free Baron's Booknotes *full of very useful notes organized by chapter*
TVtropes *holy crap, this is full of good stuff*
BookRags
Heller's Biography

OTHER REVIEWS:
Sheila O'Malley (feather in cap)
Teabelly's Palace (black eye)

A quote from Sheila O'Malley that describes Heller's humor quite well:

"I'll finish with the section on why Yossarian continuously checks himself into the hospital. It's another example of how Heller mounts the humor, ups the ante ... each sentence building on the last one, the whole thing getting funnier and funnier, even if it's juvenile and ridiculous. I read this, and it seemed to go on FOREVER, especially once you get the joke. But Heller keeps going, where other authors would leave off. Heller's sense of the absurd, his ear for repetition ... is impeccable. I love it. And mixed in with the vaudeville-type humor is the horror of war, the undeniable horror of watching your buddies get blown to pieces. It's genius. It's magic. I still have no idea how Joseph Heller pulls this off without ever preaching to us. Ever."

Interesting reads randomly found on Google Books on the Catch-22:
Insanity as redemption in contemporary American fiction By Barbara Tepa Lupack (p19-61)
War Stars By H. Bruce Franklin (p123-8)

QUESTIONS/COMMENTS/WITTICISMS ARE WELCOME HERE.
Spam comments, not so much.