Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, is probably my favorite book. I thought it was absolutely hilarious, and in a bit of a gallows-humor way, which I like. Since I don't know what else to do, I'm just going to post the essay I wrote for Advanced American Literature about this book. It's a little bit rambling, and long, but my teacher gave me a 125/130, so I assume it's fairly good. Enjoy!
Critical Analysis: Catch-22
This book was so good that it’s
hard to choose what parts to really focus on, the characters, the humor, the
plot and twisted logic all made up such integral parts of this wonderful novel.
The author, Joseph Heller, took eight years to write a novel filled with more
developed characters and twisting subplots than I have ever seen in a story,
and in such a way that kept me reading and refused to let me stop. I think this
man deserves the title genius. He uses an omniscient third-party point of view,
but focuses largely on Yossarian the bombardier captain. The timeline is not
linear, progressing more like a train of thought and revealing more and more of
the circumstances surrounding hinted-at occurrences, like the death of Snowden,
as the novel continues.
Never have I read
a more fascinating book. I read it straight through some classes- I should have
been learning math, I should have been drawing maps. But instead I was learning
the math of Milo Minderbinder, who can buy eggs at seven cents apiece and make
a profit selling them for four cents apiece. I was drawing in my head the map
of France, and the bomb line Yossarian moved. One of the things I loved about Catch-22 is that every character has a
backstory, every character has a madness. What is madness? A behavior that
others do not understand, a behavior outside the way one normally behaves. In
the military setting, where the soldiers were expected to do something that in
peace time only people regarded as insane would do- die for something
intangible because someone else told them to. After all, dulce et decorum est,
pro patria mori.
Yossarian may have
been the only sane one from a civilian point of view, a bombardier afraid to
fly the missions that might get him killed, because he knew that on the ground
there were legions of people he had never even met, all aiming their weapons
toward the sky in the hope of killing him. If he were to ever stop being easily
provoked, if he were to ever stop being paranoid, if his temper evened out or
his moods transitioned smoothly, then Yossarian would be crazy.
For
me, it was the characters that really made this story. One of my favorite minor
(if any of the characters really were minor) characters was Doc Daneeka, who
was unhelpful, obstinate, wistful, and just an all-around pain in the neck. He too
had a madness; when Milo Minderbinder bombed the squadron, he crawled around in
the shrapnel and debris trying to save lives and treat wounds and Yossarian
observed that Doc Daneeka had gone crazy, because he was completely outside his
normal behavior. On page 270, in the immediate aftermath of the actual bombing
scene, Doc Daneeka’s behavior is described thusly: “Doc Daneeka had lost his
head during MiIo’s bombardment; instead of running for cover, he had remained
out in the open and performed his duty…” I thought this was beautifully ironic:
a military medic went crazy and tried to save the lives of his men, attempting
to step between the wounded and death. Doc Daneeka himself had an odd encounter
with death: because he signed on to flights he never actually took, he was
often on the ground when all logs and records had him down as being in the air.
One of the planes he was supposed to be on went suicide after accidentally
killing a fellow soldier. Since Doc Daneeka was registered on that plane’s
flight log, he was reported as dead even while standing beside the briefing
table. People addressed him, telling him regrettably that he was dead. His wife
gets a letter informing her of his demise, and then he writes one to reassure
her that he is still alive. She is overjoyed and writes in return, but her
letter is returned by the military bureaucracy having been stamped “Deceased”
and she, rich with Doc Daneeka’s insurance and military benefits, moves away
with her children, not altogether unhappy.
Another character
I was particularly interested in was Nately.
He was the son of a rich businessman, a little naïve, a little
idealistic, and very quixotic in the most romantic way. In Rome, he fell in
love with an apathetic whore who only wanted to sleep and be slept with,
neither of which gave her significant relief from the stupor she seemed to live
in. Nately was young and unrequited love was particularly trying for him, but
romantic enough that he did not wish to break the cycle by moving on. Nately’s
whore, as the girl is known throughout the book, will not even consent to sleep
exclusively with him, because she just doesn’t care that much and doesn’t
understand why he does. Near the end of the book, though, she falls in love
with him in return, seemingly out of gratitude. They played out a twisted
version of the classic fairytale: the prince rescues the princess from some
torment and she loves him immediately and unconditionally. Nately’s whore was
being detained in a darkly funny scene by some other military gentlemen (who
were really very, very gentlemanly when Yossarian, Nately, and their companions
burst in to save Nately’s whore) and though they were not forcing her to do
anything but sit around, which she likely would have done anyway, her rescue is
an exaggerated drama, leading to her waking up in Nately’s arms and looking at
him with profound love and gratitude. Nately recognizes that he has won her
love and promptly abuses it, demanding that she change her friends and her
lifestyle. She rages and her little sister yells, making them a perfect,
loving, family. When Nately is killed in action, Yossarian goes to tell
Nately’s whore, who promptly tries to kill Yossarian. She spends the rest of
the book in a state of misdirected rage, attempting to murder Yossarian as a
sort of proxy for murdering the killer of her beloved Nately. Yossarian dodges
every attempt (some rather narrowly) and does not seem to even hold a grudge
against her for trying, saying at the end of the book that he wants to go back
to Rome and try to save her kid sister from the streets.
One character has
a life that is simply a series of events that on paper should be positive or at
least humorous but play out in a very negative manner. He is named Major Major
Major at birth by his father but is called by Caleb Major (according to his
mother’s preference) until he is enrolled in kindergarten and his legal name
comes to light. From that point, even though he is the nicest and most obedient
boy a person could ever meet, his former friends distrust him and he can never
make any new friends. As it is put on page 95, “He had a shy and hopeful manner
in each new contact, and he was always disappointed. Because he needed a friend
so desperately, he never found one.” He looked like Henry Fonda, a movie star,
which for some reason was also held against him. He did well in school and
joined the army because he was told to. He was promoted because someone did not
like having an extra Major on the roster besides their list of majors, so they
made Major Major Major a major and squadron commander, which alienated him from
the rest of his squadron. He was harassed and met with cold treatment from
almost every man, so much so that he began to purposely isolate himself,
telling his subordinate (of whom he was secretly afraid) to send people into
his office only if he wasn’t in. Milo brought Major Major his meals in his
tent. He read official communications telling him to disregard official
communications he had never seen, and signed them Washington Irving. That was
less monotonous than signing his own name, and gave him something to do where
he felt he had been useless before, especially because none of the
communications signed with Washington Irving’s name ever required his attention
again.
I just feel bad
for General Cathcart. Living in a constant state of second guessing himself
without being able to see the root of the problem-his own hubris- because of
his own hubris. Will this action get him far, will this action set him back.
Which general should he impress, which one can he ignore. He’s convinced of his
own worth, and now he has to convince other people, but he is a bit of a
catch-22 in and of himself: to be worth something he must validate himself to
others, but to feel worth something he must feel that validation is not
required. His endless circle is hard to pin down, but it has to do with feeling
superior as long as others think he is superior but of course because he’s
superior what do their opinions mean anyway? Poor man, that’s an awful circle
to be stuck in, and just as pointless as asking where infinity begins.
The
humor in Catch-22 is exactly my type: a little convoluted, a little overblown,
sarcastic, dry and in some ways, positively morbid. I think this book is
hilariously clever. Many of subplots that make up the main story are made of or
include dark humor, like Doc Daneeka’s “death” and Major Major’s whole life,
and Milo’s profiteering by helping both sides in the war. My favorite humor
subplot though, is definitely the business with signing Washington Irving’s
name to official communiques. Like the rest of the timeline and plot, signing
Washington Irving’s name jumps back and forth non-chronologically and gets very
elaborate, but once I understood what was happening it seemed like greater
offhand genius than how Milo made his profits (and much less dangerous). When
we first meet Yossarian, he is in the hospital. He, like other wounded officers,
is given the task of censoring letters home to remove any mention of troop
movements, stationing, etc. in case of interception by an enemy. Yossarian
finds this very tedious, and takes to censoring very whimsically: on page 16 I
fell in love with this book for the passage,
“To break the
monotony he invented games. Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and
out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every
adjective. …One time he blacked out all but the salutation “Dear Mary” from a
letter, and at the bottom he wrote, “I yearn for you tragically. A. T. Tappman,
Chaplain, U.S. Army.” A. T. Tappman was the group chaplain’s name... Catch-22
required that each censored letter bear the censoring officer’s name. Most
letters he didn’t read at all. On those he didn’t read at all he wrote his own
name. On those he did read he wrote, “Washington Irving.” When that grew
monotonous he wrote “Irving Washington.” Censoring the envelopes had serious
repercussions, produced a ripple of anxiety on some ethereal military echelon
that floated a C.I.D. man back into the ward posing as a patient. They all knew
he was a C.I.D. man because he kept inquiring about an officer named Irving or
Washington and because after his first day there he wouldn’t censor letters. He
found them too monotonous.”
Of
course, no one knows who Washington Irving is and the C.I.D. man never finds
out, but comes back later in the book when Yossarian has been released from the
hospital and is back in his squadron. The C.I.D man goes to the squadron
commander, Major Major, and tells him that there is someone in his squadron
signing censored letters with the name Washington Irving, or Irving Washington.
Major Major says he knows nothing about this, when really he also had been
doing it on his official documents as a way to alleviate the extreme boredom
forced on him by his ostracism from the squadron. Major Major had once heard of a man at the
idle pursuit of forging signatures on whimsically censored letters, and had
taken to doing the same. Major Major begins signing the same “Washington
Irving” he initially heard about, but soon flips it to make it Irving
Washington, and then comes up with his own idea of signing John Milton or
alternately Milton John. After tiring of word games involving Milton John and
John Milton, he returns to Washington Irving. Major Major was also visited by
the C.I.D. man from the hospital, who initially was looking for Yossarian. And
then a second C.I.D man visits, supposedly undercover but who is announced to
Major Major as a C.I.D. man. Then the first C.I.D. man comes back, demanding
who the second C.I.D. man was. Major Major is very confused, but the C.I.D. men
are run in circles by him just as much as he is by them. Eventually, the C.I.D.
man comes to the conclusion that it is the group chaplain, A.T. Tappman, who
has been stealing Major Major’s communications and signing them Washington
Irving. Actually, it is the poor chaplain who takes the abuse over the affair.
Because of the letter Yossarian once signed with the chaplain’s name, the
higher-ups become convinced that the whole business is the chaplain’s doing and
they take him underground for a little intimidation and the threat of advanced
interrogation on the matter.
While
the whole book is filled with depressive themes, it is probably the chaplain
who takes the brunt of the spiritual abuse. He feels misunderstood and
ostracized, and indeed he is; his commanding officers are unsure of what to do
with a chaplain, more than one of them are somewhat incompetent and don’t like
him much on top of that, so he is thrown out of headquarters, made to pitch his
tent in a clearing a few miles from anything, given a rotating meals schedule
so that no one eats a consecutive meal in proximity to him, and barred off-and-on
from the officer’s club. On top of that, he is saddled with an insubordinate
subordinate who does everything in his power to annoy the chaplain or make him
look bad. The chaplain is the victim of a lot of misguided anger and
discontent. He can never do anything right by anyone, except his friends
Yossarian, Nately, Hungry Joe, Aarfy, Dunbar and McWatt. He doesn’t have a lot
of self-confidence, agreeing with everyone who says he does anything wrong and
just looking for someone to protect him, someone to care, who he finds in
Yossarian. Yossarian has no patience for his superior officers’ unfounded
discrimination against the chaplain, and he stands up to punch Colonel Cathcart
for trying to kick the chaplain out of the officer’s club. The chaplain cannot
stand up for himself because he has an inferiority complex and lacks the
strength to stand up to those who push him around.
By the end of the
novel, he has learned that lying often produces better results than telling the
truth. From that point, he rapidly evolves (or devolves, depending on
perspective) to feeling like he could stand up for himself, even use physical
violence. In short, he loses his demure innocence. A. T. Tappman, group
chaplain, is a classic example of a good person’s inability to thrive as they are
at the bottom of a power chain. As long as there is someone higher up who is
willing to use any measures necessary to accomplish what they want done, a
quiet, kind person will be pushed aside. Either they leave, are forever
marginalized, or stand up for themselves and bring about a change in their
nature. The chaplain did the latter, tired of feeling incompetent and unsure,
and it changed his character as well as his circumstances.
Since
the timeline of Catch-22 is not
linear, the plot is initially a little hard to follow. Around the middle of the
book though, I realized it wasn’t so much a story with a beginning, middle and
an end as it is a group of shorter stories, all with their own starts and
finishes, all intertwining to become the story of Yossarian the bombardier. In
summary, Yossarian’s story goes something like this: a bombardier (Yossarian)
with determination and audacity flies a mission in which his plane is hit,
critically wounding a young soldier. Unable to save the young soldier and
thoroughly shaken, Yossarian loses his nerve and begins to become increasingly
worried that he is going to die. His squadron General continuously raises the
number of missions his men have to fly, and Yossarian realizes that his chance
to go home will likely never come. He becomes more and more paranoid, seemingly
unbalanced and insane on paper. Eventually, a friend of his fakes his own death
and is heard of in Sweden. Yossarian decides to desert too, as he feels that he
has done his share of risking his life for what he has come to feel is not his
country, but the whim of the squadron commanders.
The title of this
book is also the crux of the plot: Catch-22 is a military clause which creates
a contradiction. In the Miriam-Webster dictionary, catch-22 is defined as “a
problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance
inherent in the problem or by a rule.” For Yossarian, catch-22 means that
though the regulations say a doctor can take him off flight duty for being
crazy, he becomes sane as soon as he asks to be removed from flight duty for
being crazy. So even though a doctor may agree that Yossarian- or any other
soldier- is a nervous wreck and mad in the most textbook way, he cannot be
removed from duty if he asks to be. Yossarian spends almost the entire book
being called crazy, thinking everyone else is crazy, and slowly coming to the
realization that neither he nor anyone else will ever be removed from the
combat roster, or exempted from the ever-rising number of missions.
After
reading this book, I don’t think I will ever think of anything in the same way
again, especially not war. In school, we’re always taught, ‘oh, France went to
war with Britain,’ but really, countries don’t fight each other. How can they?
They’re just arbitrary, invisible lines drawn through the geography of the
world. The people of one country fight the people of another, and the war on
that scale is exactly what Yossarian suspects it to be: motivated by
commanders. Some Generals want fame, some officers want promotions, some just
want the war to be over and they’ll fight until it is, and the rare few who
care about their country’s cause. I knew before reading this book that war
changes people psychologically, but this book was really perspective-changing
because it didn’t write like everything that was happening was completely
normal. Some war books, like All Quiet on
the Western Front, are written in a casual ‘Yeah, that’s just how things
are here. We’ve gotten used to it,’ tone that underscores the psychological effect
but downplays the actual events. But in Catch-22
there are completely twisted parts, like Milo’s business deals, and horrifying
parts, like when Milo bombs his own squadron, but nothing is ever under-emphasized
except the behavioral shenanigans of Yossarian and the other men in the
squadron, which sometimes are emphasized and sometimes merely stated in a
casual manner. For example, Hungry Joe’s strange ailments are brought up
several times, from several different angles, but when Yossarian and Dunbar
sexually harass Nurse Duckett, while the ensuing state of affairs is
proportionally serious and emphatic within the plot, the actual scene is not.
There is very little gravity infused while the poor woman is jumping around the
ward having various sexual attributes groped at. Indeed, the scene is written
with almost a touch of humor, as though the men do not take seriously what they
are doing. Yossarian even consoles the crying nurse immediately afterward, as
though he really gave no thought to what he did.
The
madness of each character is important, and is discussed as such. The mental
affairs of wartime are given just as much if not more mention than the
shooting, the bombing, the dying and the wondering about the other side. The
most gruesome scene in the whole book was also the most directly hinted at, the
one given the most gravitas: the death of Snowden. Throughout the book,
Yossarian recalls the young tail gunner whimpering about being cold. This is
not explained until the full scene is finally relived: Snowden was injured in
two places. Some flak (anti-aircraft fire) hit him in the leg, and some went
through his flak suit, ripping open his body cavity and dislodging his organs
so that the only thing holding them in was what remained of the suit. Yossarian
treated the visible wound on Snowden’s leg, and Snowden whimpered about being
cold the whole time, which confused Yossarian because while the wound was
serious, it should not have been life-threatening. When Yossarian finally
notices the bloody hole in Snowden’s flak suit, he unzips it to treat the wound
and the tail gunner’s organs spill all over the floor of the aircraft. This
perturbing moment was the same moment that Yossarian lost his nerve, and his
refusal to fight, paranoia over being killed, and eventual desertion all
revolve on the axis of Snowden’s painful, graphic death.
Catch-22 didn’t only change my
perspective on war, it also changed the way I think about everyday scenarios,
especially when it has to do with the way people think and act. I still think
certain behaviors are crazy, even if logically I see how they would be
justified from a certain viewpoint other than my own, but the majority of
things that people do I have started looking at as best I can through the lens
of their past and personality rather than my own. It’s not something that comes
naturally, but it’s not necessarily hard to take a moment and think about why
they’re acting a certain way or saying a certain thing. It’s also gotten harder
to abide putting people in statistics, because of the generals ordering their
men into dangerous situations just to earn themselves commendations. I don’t
like that they saw their men as squadrons rather than as a group of individuals
each with something to live for.
In summary, Catch-22 was one of those ingenious
novels that used incredibly clever methods to write both a good story and a
good moral. The book made a point in a way I liked and think that almost anyone
could relate to at least a little bit. Catch-22
was filled with black humor making points about the way different people think
and the way events unfold. Even if the timeline was a little confusing at
first, being nonlinear, I think in the end that method of slow revelation
actually made the book even better than it would have been had the story been
told in order from start to finish. Time being The characters were amazing, the action was
perfect, and the way it changed the way I think is something I also view as
good. I always tried to understand people, but Catch-22 placed such an emphasis on normal insanity that I’ve decided
we must all be crazy to someone.
I mostly just like this because it shows off the colour of my hair. ALL the colours. 
These are from a couple weeks ago, but it shows off my awesome blue-green (at the time) hair, and one of my favorite casual dresses. I'm sorry to say, I got it from Hot Topic, but this summer I have marvelous plans to go thrifting and on sewing adventures :3 I'm in my last two days of high school ever, and this week I've been doing pretty cool outfits, so be prepared for some amazingness... 
Yet another book bought for the cover art... I know, I know, I'm one of those people who looks at shiny objects and freaks out. But anyway. I knew it was going to be a teen drama, but with a mermaid and makeup like that on the cover, why should I care? It ended up being the very very classic teenage story about a girl thinking she's in love with one guy and falling for another (the cliche bad-boy neighbor, even!) the twist was this: she's a mermaid, and if she kisses a human she bonds to them, and they get a telepathic connection and he starts changing into a merperson (don't ask me how all that happens from a kiss, it's very wibbly-wobbly) What I liked about this book: The cover art, the emotional description and the plot twists. What I didn't like about this book: simply written, straightforward progression, shallow characters, easy fixes to hard problems. All in all, a thoroughly "meh" book. I'm not sorry I read it, it was a good unwinding, waste-of-time sort of thing, but I wouldn't read it again.
This is the latest in the Midnight's Daughter novels. I LOVED Midnight's Daughter, was fond of Death's Mistress, and appreciate Fury's Kiss. It continues the story of Dorina Basarab, niece of Vlad Dracula, dhampir, and vampire hunter extraordinaire. She is a strong woman in the beginning of the series, though absolutely not without her issues. These really come to a head in Fury's Kiss, when her vampire nature begins to break out of the side of her mind her father had confined it to many, many years before. The story is quite good, really, and Karen Chance has a writing style I like, so if you've read the other two novels I'd suggest you continue on, and read Fury's Kiss. Warning though, there is an escalation of the sexual aspect between Dorina and Louis-Cesare, so if that bothers you, I would suggest you leave this book alone or be prepared to skip a section or three.
And then, the highbrow book. The classic. The psychology study in a story. I LOVED it. True, I was a bit creeped out at times, as I found myself sympathizing with Humbert Humbert, the pseudonym of a middle-aged writer who falls in love with a young girl and marries her mother to remain close to her. This book is well-written, emotionally charged, quite deep, and all in all I really understand why it's considered a classic. I will definitely be reading it again, and I would urge you very strongly to read it yourself if you haven't yet, but be warned that, given the nature of the subject, you might find it slightly disconcerting or downright offensive at some scenes, though it is not written i n a manner meant to offend.
there was some sort of boating group out practicing, and I took pictures of the bay as we sailed across it because it was such a gorgeous day and the boats looked like they were having such fun!
