By Joseph Heller
Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, New York, NY; 463 pp., 1961
Reviewed by Mark Biskeborn
An unconventional novel arose from the hand of an unknown author to the stature of a world classic and its messages remain relevant, nay, prophetic for all ages. For the most part, the many characters carry out their tasks without questioning their own activities or their leaders; they seem happy simply to occupy their time.
“Group Headquarters was alarmed, for there was no telling what people might find out once they felt free to ask whatever questions they wanted to. Colonel Cathcart sent Colonel Korn to stop it, and Colonel Korn succeeded with a rule governing the asking of questions. Colonel Korn’s rule was a stroke of genius, Colonel Korn explained in his report to Colonel Cathcart. Under Colonel Korn’s rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did….The corporal and Colonel Korn agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.” |
Youssarian stands out of this crowd because he asks many questions. He wants control of his life, he wants to live, he “was willing to be victim to anything but circumstances.” Wanting to escape the bureaucratic machinery, makes Youssarian look like a coward to most people around him. For this reason, he is the protagonist, but not exactly a hero in the traditional or conformist sense – he is the anti-hero.
“But Youssarian couldn’t be happy, even though the Texan didn’t want him to be, because outside the hospital there was still nothing funny going on. The only thing going on was a war, and no one seemed to notice but Yossarian and Dunbar. And when Yossarian tried to remind people, they drew away from him and thought he was crazy. Even Clevinger, who should have known better but didn’t, had told him he was crazy the last time they had seen each other, which was just before Yossarian had fled into the hospital.” |
This novel’s world flourishes with characters moving about as an army of ants, running in circular logic from which they cannot step free, nor do many of them seem to care even if they were aware. Yossarian and Dunbar stand out almost as villains. Youssarian flows against the social current as the anti-hero; he recognizes the absurd logical loops in which others around him consider their lives perfectly normal.
“In a way the C.I.D. man was pretty lucky, because outside the hospital the war was still going on. Men went mad and were rewarded with medals. All over the world, boys on every side of the bomb line were laying down their lives for what they had been told was their country, and no one seemed to mind, least of all the boys who were laying down their young lives. There was no end in sight. The only end in sight was doomsday had it not been for that had it not been for that patriotic Texan with his infundibuliform jowls and his lumpy, rumple headed, indestructible smile cracked forever across the front of his face like the brim of a black ten-gallon hat.” |
No, surprisingly, in the above passage, the narrator is not describing our Texan, the 43rd President. Catch 22 first appeared in bookstores in 1961, when the Vietnam War was moving into high gear. But the story takes place near the end of World War II on a small island, Pianosa, off the coast of Italy. Although most people might view WW II as a highly justified war, it nevertheless played out with all the graft, corruption, and big-money contracts as any other. WW II ushered America into the world theater as a superpower with the moral credibility that would feed the ego-centric hubris of a sleeping giant with an unmatched thirst for power.
Every decade that followed WW II showed America how to become an empire at the cost of the republic, how to garner an emperor’s war power for the President, at the cost of Congressional restraint. Catch 22 captures the essence of the credulous, poorly educated, and uncritical citizens who follow mindlessly the Pipe Piper of bureaucratic institutions from government, military, and big business.
Heller began writing this novel in the late 1950’s to see it first published in 1961. This period saw the rise of the Truman Doctrine and the Cold War era during which the U.S. fought to ward off any spread of communism in places like Korea. In order to uphold the Truman Doctrine, the U.S. military budget began its exponential growth into what now fattens into the largest military spending in world history. Heller’s novel satirizes this transformation of America from a republic into an empire that runs on a bloating bureaucratic military-industrial complex, the dangers of which Eisenhower warned.
Given this background, Catch 22 reflects a larger transformation of America than simply a reaction to the Vietnam War. In fact, by 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred and the U.S. was just beginning to escalate toward an official and publicly recognized conflict in Vietnam. The anti-war protests against the draft began after Operation Rolling Thunder in 1965 when the U.S. government committed soldiers to the conflict which peaked in the late 1960’s to early 1970’s. The antiwar movement and the political awareness that grew from it, created an unexpectedly huge audience for Catch 22.
The novel reveals the logical loops in which the citizens run about in their daily occupations. All people need is a logic, an ideology, a belief system to guide them, and they’ll do whatever the program requires for the sake of fitting-in and getting along in life. Catch 22 is a law structured in mindless, uncritical circles.
“There was only one catch and that was Catch 22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy… Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch 22 and let out a respectful whistle.” |
This circular and absurd logic pervades throughout this story, in almost every conversation between the characters, in their actions and thoughts. It creates an eerie Kafkaesque atmosphere that continues through the real world. This looping logic could not be more obvious than in America’s present war in Iraq. As a timeless classic, one can now read Catch 22 as if it were written today. Bush Jr.’s initial justifications for his blind invasion of Iraq were based on lies, now obvious and abundantly proven, about imminent threats of WMD’s and later of terrorism.
When these reasons were proven as valueless as the large quantities of chocolate covered cotton that Heller’s seemingly innocent entrepreneurial character, Milo Minderbinder, sells, Bush Jr. explained that the war was necessary because terrorists overran Iraq. Of course, this statement spins in its own circle because regular Iraqi citizens as well as foreign intruders appeared on the scene as insurrectionists only after the U.S. occupation.
When this reason for war no longer sufficed, Bush Jr. told Americans that we must continue fighting in order to honor the soldiers already killed in battle. Obviously this logic, too, loops on itself into an absurd infinity. If Americans were silly enough to follow this logic, soldiers would go to war endlessly in search of honor of those who died before them regardless of whatever the initial reasons were at the war’s beginning. We know about the lemmings, the small rodents who run over the cliff only because their companions did so before them.
Once the program is put into place, no American is really silly enough to run in step like a mindless hamster on its exercise wheel. Americans are much smarter than that. But then, sometimes reality plays out more phantasmagorical than the most wildly imagined satirical fiction. Sometimes reality is less believable, less verisimilar, than fantasy.
In Catch 22, Milo Minderbinder’s commercial operations reveal the only realistic reasons for the war despite the double talk of ideological calls to freedom, liberty, and democracy. Economic power drives men to many places, to many endeavors.
Milo Minderbinder represents the small time entrepreneur working the black-market. He claims that his growing enterprise offers benefits. “Every man will have a share.”
Compared to Colonel Carthcart, who sends his men to death only for the sake of his own promotions, Minderbinder’s profiteering seems moral, at least until he does a deal with the Germans to bomb his own squadron. Then his syndicate takes on the power of a multinational that no state laws or national loyalty can restrain. Again, reality proves more surreal than the fictional satire.
In today’s cavalier cowboy gunfight in Iraq, one wonders where the $9 billion of tax money disappeared?
How did Halliburton obtain noncompetitive government contracts whose profits exceed any other?
The bureaucracy marches in circles that few, if any, dare to criticize as in the spinning world of Catch 22.
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Mark Biskeborn is a writer. You can email him mark@markbiskeborn.com
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