Catch-22 Essay, Research Paper

The novel, Catch-22, is a comedy about soldiers during World War II.

However, this comic scenes and phrases are quite tragic when they are

thought about, as most things related to war are, which makes this

comedy completely absurd. The best way to represent this idea is

through the characters in the book, specifically, Yossarian, Huple, and

Nately?s whore?s kid sister and the events that occur with their

thoughts and their actions.

Clearly, the main character and one whose life is chiefly

described, is Yossarian. Yossarian has a slightly sick sense of humor

and way of looking at things. In the first chapter, Heller tells us

that letters sent by the soldiers had to be reviewed in order to prevent

any secret information going out to the public, or, even worse, to the

enemy. Yossarian, from lack of anything better to do, censors all the

letters. Sometimes he crosses out everything but a, an and the,

sometimes adjectives, whatever he feels like that day. For his final

gag he signs these letters as Washington Irving to totally confuse the

readers of these letters. This is funny, however it is ultimately

tragic. These are the letters that every wife, mother and daughter runs

to the mailbox for in order to see that their husbands, fathers and sons

are all right. This is a letter that could say: ?Honey, I?m coming

home?, or ?I love you. When I come home I want to marry you.? These

letters could change the whole lifestyle of so many people and

Yossarian alone is tampering with them. The absurdity of that is

immense.

A gag of slightly higher consequence occurred in Chapter 12, when

Yossarian decided to move the bomb line over Bologna. What I believe is

the most ridiculous in the whole process was his reason for doing it.

Everyone did not want to go on this mission to capture Bologna. They

prayed the rain would never go away, or that the bomb line would

mysteriously move, anything just mot to go on this mission. Clevinger,

in disbelief at the stupidity of these men, tells Yossarian: ?They

really believe that we wouldn?t have to fly that mission tomorrow if

someone would only tiptoe up to the map in the middle of the night and

move the bomb line over Bologna. Can you imagine?? So Yossarian

figures ?Why not??. As hysterical of a joke as this may be, an

important city that was taken by the enemy had to be bombed, and now

everybody thinks that it was captured already. This ?joke? could have

and may have lead to the deaths of innocent people, which is yet not

only absurd but is also catastrophic.

Two character that, for me, expressed the highest, but the most

true absurdity in life are Huple and Nately?s whore?s kid sister. These

two characters have one thing in common. They both want to be adults

too fast. Huple is only fifteen, and lied about his age to get into the

army. The kid sister is twelve years old, but wants to be just like her

older sister and seduce men. However the absurdity of this is not at

all that they want to become older, because everyone at that age does.

The absurdity is that the things they want to do as adults are the

things that most adults resent most about being adults. The last thing

most men want to do is to be drafted, and the last thing that most women

want to do is to become a prostitute in order to support themselves.

It is clear that Joseph Heller does not write in a certain pattern

visible in the works of other writers. he has his own unique way of

expressing the absurdity of the universe in a comic way. This style, in

my mind, is very commendable because he makes us laugh, yet understand

the meaning and maybe even seriousness of the idea he is trying to get

across. The alternative would be to write a tragic novel about men at

war which really would not grab the reader?s attention as comedies do

and as this book did.