Catch it if You Can

Catch It if You Can
Editorial of Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

         “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t”- the solid spine of every situation in Joseph Heller’s acclaimed classic novel Catch 22. The quirky, somewhat insane protagonist of this satirical 20th century mircocosm is Yossarian; paranoid, promiscuous, and seemingly both intelligent and not. He claims “catastrophes [are] lurking everywhere” no matter where he is. Yossarian spends as much time in the hospital as possible to avoid being sent out on missions. Oh, by the way, I might mention he’s on an island near Italy and currently in the middle of World War 2- the situation is never clearly stated in the book. Being both sane and insane at the same time, Yossarian is determined to live forever, even if it kills him. Ironic, no? Perhaps a better word would be ‘delusional’. Aside from Yossarian there is a myriad of other equally insane characters ranging from the kindly, timid Chaplain to the fickle, hot-tempered nature of Nately’s Whore (aptly named). The entirety of the book was made of chapters overlapping in time. There is no plot line, thou try as you might to find one. Each chapter is about a few different characters or returns to a previous chapter to continue the story it left off. It’s not hard to summarize, so here’s the Reader’s Digest version in seven lines: Yossarian is determined to live forever, Minderbinder controls a “non” profitable black market , the Chaplain doubts God, returns to God, and then wants to go home, Catchcart will kill his men to get a promotion, Nately is the young kid whose head is level until he falls in love with a Roman prostitute, Clevinger is a hypocrite, Major Major Major Major is an outcast commander, and Mudd is the ever-present, unofficial dead body in Yossarian’s tent. If that was a confusing run-on sentence, just imagine what the expanded version was like.
         I’m damned if I do, I’m damned if I don’t, so why should I read the book? To understand the concept of a Catch 22, which can be explained in all of about three sentences. So why would Heller decide to write a verbose run-on sentence forty-two chapters long about it? You dwell on that and I’ll continue writing. This book, to my best guess, was written instead to get the idea of Catch 22 across to the common folk. I’m not sure how that works, irony notwithstanding. I’m fairly certain that under the title of each chapter it was I who wrote “still confused”. This was anything but easy to follow. Every chapter was so alike, and all their thoughts so muddled, their motives and actions and reason itself was hard to understand. So here I quote from the cowardly Yossarian, “to die, or not to die, that is the question” of everything Yossarian does as he is “willing to be victim to anything but circumstance”. I do believe the whole point of the book was circumstance and what you do when it happens. Ironic, though, that it was circumstance that sent Yossarian’s fickle arse home.
         Although most of the book was a collection of nonsensical notions of half-sane men caught in a war, Heller had his moments of humor and a certain, bitter level of sanity and social understanding. For instance, the conversation between Clevinger and Yossarian when Yossarian states “they hate Jews”, Clevinger replies that he’s not Jewish. As un-clever a man he is, Yossarian states “It will make no difference- they’re after everybody”, and he was right. The Nazis were after everybody, so best get moving.
          But in spite of the few good points in this book, none of them were the grand point. Catch 22 was filled with irony and paradoxes and nonsense , albeit nonsense with a very good point. From chapter one through chapter thirty-eight I couldn’t stomach how selfish all the characters’ actions and thoughts were. It wasn’t until chapter thirty-nine that Yossarian finally sees the big picture: there’s a war going on and you had better help secure whatever you can for the greater good.
         Personally, I think everyone should read Catch22- it’s good to get the brain juices going. It’s ironic, stupid, it only makes sense some of the time (and that’s only if you add your own words), you always want to know what happens next, and you hang on to every word. Did I like it? Not in the least, but you’re not supposed to like it, just make sense of it, if you can (another catch). So Nately’s Whore becomes angry with Yossarian for letting Nately, the only man she ever loved, die; the Chaplain regains his faith and envisions returning home to his wife and children; Mudd is removed from Yossarian’s tent; Milo makes his black market profits; Yossarian is wounded in battle (his worst fear) and is sent home because of it (his goal all along); the end. What a book!
         In the words of Yossarian; “Someone had to do something sometime. Every victim was a culprit , every culprit a victim, and somebody had to stand up sometime to try and break the lousy chain of inherited habit hat was imperiling them all.” Congratulations to you, Yossarian, for bringing about the conclusion to this ridiculously long and confusing novel. Rock on, love, rock on.