2.2. Joseph Heller's peculiar writing style in "CATCH 2 ".
Catch-2
, satirical novel by American writer Joseph Heller, published in 1961.
The work centres on Captain John Yossarian, an American bombardier stationed on
a Mediterranean island during World War II, and chronicles his desperate attempts
to stay alive. Yossarian interprets the entire war as a personal attack and becomes
convinced that the military is deliberately trying to send him to an untimely death.
He therefore spends much of the book concocting ever more inventive ways of
escaping his missions.
The “catch” in
Catch-2
involves a mysterious Army Air Forces regulation
which asserts that a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly
dangerous combat missions but that if he makes the necessary formal request to be
relieved of such missions, the very act of making the request proves that he is sane
and therefore ineligible to be relieved. The term
Catch-2
entered the English
language meaning “a problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by
a circumstance inherent in the problem.”
Catch-2
exhibits a bewildering chronology, with its beginning taking place
more than halfway through the events described, and it proceeds in a series of
looping flashbacks. Most of the novel takes place on the Mediterranean island
of Pianosa in 1944, where Yossarian is a bombardier serving under the indecisive
and ambitious Colonel Cathcart, who continually raises the number of missions the
men are required to fly before their tours of duty are completed. Yossarian is
promoted to captain after a mission in Ferrara, Italy, in which, after missing a bridge,
he flies back a second time and successfully destroys it, though a squadron member
is killed.
Yossarian shares a tent with Orr, who crashes his plane on every mission but
always survives, and with the belongings of Mudd, who was killed in action two
hours after his arrival on base but before being officially checked in. The mess
officer, Milo Minderbinder, gradually turns his mission to acquire food into an
international black-market syndicate in which he eventually enlists the enemy
Germans, at one point even having German planes (bearing the logo of his syndicate)
bomb his own base (resulting in Mudd’s death). Other characters include the flight
surgeon Doc Daneeka and Hungry Joe, who suffers screaming nightmares except
when he has missions to fly.
The central event of the story is a raid on Avignon, France. During the mission
the incompetent copilot Dobbs seizes the controls from Huple, the 15-year-old pilot,
and the radio-gunner, Snowden, is killed. His grisly death has a profound effect on
Yossarian, who appears naked at the next formation and at Snowden’s funeral. From
that point on, Yossarian, acutely aware of his mortality, strives to avoid death at all
costs. In an attempt to cancel a dangerous raid on Bologna, Italy, Yossarian
convinces Colonel Korn that the enemy has a weapon that can glue a formation of
planes together in midflight. Although the mission is eventually approved,
Yossarian, flying with pilot Kid Sampson and copilot Nately, pretends that the
intercom is broken in order to force them back to base early. The rest of the squadron
returns unharmed. On another raid Yossarian’s plane is hit, largely due to the
incompetence of the navigator, Aarfy, but it lands safely. Later Yossarian fakes an
illness in order to take refuge in the hospital, a tactic he uses frequently to avoid
combat.
During a mission to Leghorn, Italy, Yossarian suffers a leg wound that results
in his being hospitalized again. While there he and airman Dunbar take on the
identities of other patients. After putting his hand up Nurse Duckett’s skirt,
Yossarian is sent to the hospital psychiatrist, who concludes that he is crazy and
should go home. However, because the psychiatrist thought he was examining A.
Fortiori, it is Fortiori who gets sent home.
After returning to his tent, Yossarian declines Orr’s request to fly with him, and
on his next mission Orr crashes into the Mediterranean and does not return. Cathcart
then orders an attack on an undefended village in order to produce pleasing
photographs for General Peckem. Dunbar, however, dumps his bombs a safe
distance from the village. On a subsequent training run Yossarian threatens to
strangle the pilot McWatt for performing dangerous aerial stunts. Later McWatt
playfully buzzes the beach in his plane and accidentally slices Kid Sampson in half;
he then deliberately crashes his plane into a mountain. Because Doc Daneeka was
falsely listed on McWatt’s manifest, it is assumed that he also died, and he is
thereafter unable to convince anyone, including his wife, that he remains alive.
After four young recruits are assigned to Yossarian’s tent, Yossarian escapes
to Rome with Hungry Joe. While there Yossarian helps Nately rescue a prostitute
being held by some senior officers. Nately is in love with the woman, and she now
returns his affections. Later Nurse Duckett tells Yossarian that she has overheard a
plan to “disappear” Dunbar; after that, Yossarian cannot find Dunbar. The number
of required missions is raised to 80, and both Dobbs and Nately are killed in combat.
Yossarian begins walking backward and refuses to fly more missions. He is sent to
Rome to rest. When he tells the prostitute about Nately’s death, she blames
Yossarian and makes repeated attempts to kill him, even after he returns to Pianosa.
However, when he learns that military police have emptied the brothel, he travels to
Rome without permission. He is unable to find either the prostitute or her younger
sister, and Rome has become shockingly barbarous. He goes to the officers’
apartment, where he finds that Aarfy has raped and killed a maid. The military police
arrive and arrest Yossarian for being in Rome without a pass.
Facing possible court-martial, Yossarian is offered a deal by Korn and Cathcart.
They will promote him to major and send him home if he pretends to be friends with
the two officers and shows support for their policies. Yossarian agrees, but, as he is
leaving, Nately’s prostitute, disguised as a private, stabs him. In the hospital a
mysterious man tells Yossarian, “We’ve got your pal.” Yossarian reflects that his
only remaining friend is Hungry Joe, but the chaplain tells him that he too has died.
Yossarian decides to renege on the deal. The chaplain returns to tell him that Orr has
been found living in Sweden, and Yossarian decides to go there. As he leaves the
hospital, Yossarian evades another murder attempt.
Catch-2
turns its back on conventional notions of heroism in order to place war
in a much broader psychological, sociological, and economic context. Hilariously
funny, the novel’s insights are also deadly serious. It marks a major departure from
the austere realist approach that had dominated American war fiction until the
sweeping changes of the 1960s. Alongside works by Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas
Pynchon,
Catch-2
opened the floodgates for a wave of American fiction in which
war was represented with a new countercultural sensibility in a language every bit
as wild, grotesque, and bizarre as the real thing. In 1994 Heller published a sequel
entitled
Closing Time
, which describes the later lives of some of the characters
in
Catch-22
.
Though
Catch-2
is set during World War II, it also addresses the effects
of McCarthyism and the Red Scare during the 1950s in the United States. The book
initially met with mixed reviews, but, with the advent of American involvement in
the Vietnam War, the book became increasingly popular, eventually gaining the
status of a classic. A 1970 film version, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Alan
Arkin as Yossarian, contributed to the novel’s growing fame.
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