(no subject)
Mar. 6th, 2008 10:51 amJoseph Heller, Catch-22
It's a dark, dark book. The darkness is easy to overlook at the beginning, when everything is all jokes and whimsy until you're reminded that one day Clevinger flew into a cloud and never came out again, or Yossarian starts complaining about the dead man in his tent who's not even there. The scenes about Snowden, the dying tailgunner Yossarian fails to save, start off vague and detached. Even the book's loose relationship with chronology contributes to the madcap zany humor. You always know that there's another wacky episode just around the next page.
Then about three-quarters through the book Kid Sampson dies in a freak unlucky accident, and the darkness and viciousness come out in full force. The Chaplain undergoes a Kafkaesque interrogation sequence. Nately is killed shortly after achieving his heart's desire. Aarfy throws a woman out a window and isn't arrested-- but Yossarian is, for being in Rome without a pass.
Catch-22 itself is rephrased by one character as "They have a right to do anything that's not against the law," and finally as "They can do anything you can't stop them from doing." That's the real lesson, no different from Orwell's "The object of power is power, and the object of torture is torture."
The ending isn't wholly dark, though. Yossarian and the Chaplain both recognize that the only way to win is not to play, and set out to do just that. The final image is of Yossarian running, the most active thing he's done for the entire book. He's found himself and what he needs to do.
I was going to follow this up with a reread of Closing Time, the sequel, but the wackiness and prose and dark were just too much. Maybe in another month or two.
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's 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 and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.I first read this book my senior year of high school. I fell in love with it on about the third page, at the line "Dunbar was working so hard at increasing his lifespan that Yossarian thought he was dead." Everything that made no sense on the surface was eventually revealed to have a rationale that seemed to hold together perfectly logically, until you poked at it. It's in everyone's interest to not poke at it, though, so the system works. Right up until Yossarian finally says "the hell with it."
It's a dark, dark book. The darkness is easy to overlook at the beginning, when everything is all jokes and whimsy until you're reminded that one day Clevinger flew into a cloud and never came out again, or Yossarian starts complaining about the dead man in his tent who's not even there. The scenes about Snowden, the dying tailgunner Yossarian fails to save, start off vague and detached. Even the book's loose relationship with chronology contributes to the madcap zany humor. You always know that there's another wacky episode just around the next page.
Then about three-quarters through the book Kid Sampson dies in a freak unlucky accident, and the darkness and viciousness come out in full force. The Chaplain undergoes a Kafkaesque interrogation sequence. Nately is killed shortly after achieving his heart's desire. Aarfy throws a woman out a window and isn't arrested-- but Yossarian is, for being in Rome without a pass.
Catch-22 itself is rephrased by one character as "They have a right to do anything that's not against the law," and finally as "They can do anything you can't stop them from doing." That's the real lesson, no different from Orwell's "The object of power is power, and the object of torture is torture."
The ending isn't wholly dark, though. Yossarian and the Chaplain both recognize that the only way to win is not to play, and set out to do just that. The final image is of Yossarian running, the most active thing he's done for the entire book. He's found himself and what he needs to do.
I was going to follow this up with a reread of Closing Time, the sequel, but the wackiness and prose and dark were just too much. Maybe in another month or two.