The book Catch 22 by Joseph Heller deals with one of the most absurd behaviors found in humanity: warfare. In this satirical novel, Captain Yossarian goes through daily life in the military during World War II, aiming towards life after the war. His objective is to live or leave, whichever comes first. He has completed every mission he should have completed to leave the army and has never failed to hit the target. Considering all of the statistics, he should be able to abandon the military and get on with his life. There is a catch however: Catch 22. Catch 22 says that “you’ve always got to do what your commanding officer tells you to.”(pg. 58) Even though the Twenty-seventh Air Force says the soldiers can go home after forty missions, it doesn’t say they have to go home, it does however, say they have to do what they are ordered to do; so Yossarian can’t go home. Furthermore, Yossarian is deemed insane by society because he participates in the war, yet he wants to leave, which deems him sane enough to stay in the army. The concept of Catch 22 has become larger than the pages of the novel, making its way into the dictionary where it is defined as “a paradoxical situation in which an individual cannot or is incapable of avoiding a problem because of contradictory constraints or rules.” The absurdity of Catch 22 lies not only in the concept it breaches, but in the dialogue, the characters, and even the military ideals. Catch 22 critiques warfare by re-enacting and analyzing it without the scope of tragedy that is normally used to examine it, turning instead, to absurdity.
The interesting thing about making something absurd is that it can make the reader shake his head and chortle, without realizing how commonplace absurd behaviors are in reality. During the first pages of the novel, the reader is just getting used to the way life works at the military camp where Yossarian spends his time. Eventually Captain Yossarian himself starts to become a more defined character, characterized by hypocritical and absurd thoughts. One of his main absurd beliefs is that everyone is out to kill him: of course they are. He is in war; the enemy will shoot at any target from the opposing band they can find. Yossarian however takes this as a personal attack, and claims that he has proof for it because “strangers he didn’t know shot at him with cannons every time he flew up into the air to drop bombs on them” (pg. 17). The absurdity of this statement lies in the fact that he is moving into the air to kill them, yet for some reason this is not as bad as it would be if they were dropping bombs on him. Therefore he takes it as a personal offence when they defend themselves, given that he has done nothing to deserve it. Obviously. He also states that their shooting at him isn’t “funny at all”, and neither is his life at camp. In fact, Yossarian seems to find everything quite bleak, contrasting heavily with the satirical and absurd tone of the novel. In a certain way, his gloomy attitude makes the situations in the book even more humorous; after all, what is more humorous than another person’s pain? As the novel begins to develop, it is easier to relate Captain Yossarian to military officials and captains in reality. He represents those that slander the enemy country because of their “outrageous murders”, “countless massacres”, and “violent war strategies”, ignoring that these acts are all committed in self-defense, or against a country that has committed them as well.
Yet another facet of absurdity in Catch 22 can be seen in the character’s goals, and what they are aiming towards after the war. Many of them have absolutely no desire to leave the war, and don’t really care about what their fate is in the conflict. Others, like Dunbar have other things in mind. “He was working hard at increasing his life span. He did it by cultivating boredom. Dunbar was working so hard at increasing his life span that Yossarian thought he was dead.” (pg. 9) This counterproductive goal is one example of how absurd humans can be when they really want something. Dunbar wants to live a long life, but he attempts to do so by wasting the life he’s got. There is no point to living if you seem dead, just as there is no point to dying without having lived, so why does he do this? What kind of person would cultivate boredom and choose to live his/her life in a comatose state? As a reader, one immediately starts thinking that no one could possibly be this stupid, but… aren’t we all? We are the race that bombs in the name of peace and tries to control a country in the name of democracy. We are the only beings on earth capable of hypocrisy to such extents. In Catch 22, Heller is making this counterproductive, hypocritical, and absurd way of thinking a personality trait of a single character, making it more evidently stupid than in is when applied to a big conflict. This way of proving a point is consistent throughout the novel: portray big human errors on small things and render the stupid beyond any logical explanation. As far as ridiculing humanity and our conflicts, it is very effective.
The novel Catch 22 is characterized by various themes, all of them used in different ways in order to ridicule warfare and the reasoning behind it. In doing this, the author manages to ridicule humanity as a hole. Our goals, our beliefs, even the things we believe are being done for all the right reasons seem pointless if Catch 22 logic is applied to the situation. The logic of this book is brimming with absurdity, up to the point where it can barely be considered logic anymore. The New Republic defined Catch 22 as “one of the most bitterly funny works in the language…explosive, bitter, subversive, brilliant.” As you delve deeper into the novel, it becomes impossible to disagree.
