Catch-22
(Joseph Heller)
Some info on Joseph
Heller
b. May 1, 1923,
Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.
American writer
whose novel Catch-22 (1961) was one of the most significant works of protest
literature to appear after World War II. The satirical novel was both a
critical and a popular success, and a film version appeared in 1970.Heller flew
60 combat missions as a bombardier with the U.S. Air Force in Europe. He
received an M.A. at Columbia University in 1949 and was a Fulbright scholar at
the University of Oxford (1949-50). He taught English at Pennsylvania State
University (1950-52) and worked as an advertising copywriter for the magazines
Time (1952-56) and Look (1956-58) and as promotion manager for McCall's
(1958-61), meanwhile writing Catch-22 in his spare time. The plot of the novel
centres on the antihero Captain John Yossarian, stationed at an airstrip on a
Mediterranean island in World War II, and portrays his desperate attempts to
stay alive. The "catch" in Catch-22 involves a mysterious Air Force
regulation, which asserts that a man is considered insane if he willingly
continues to fly dangerous combat missions; but, if he makes the necessary
formal request to be relieved of such missions, the very act of making the
request proves that he is sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved. The
term Catch-22 thereafter entered the English language as a reference to a
proviso that trips one up no matter which way one turns.His later novels
including Something Happened (1974), an unrelievedly pessimistic novel, Good as
Gold (1979), a satire on life in Washington, D.C., and God Knows (1984), a wry,
contemporary-vernacular monologue in the voice of the biblical King David, were
less successful. Closing Time, a sequel to Catch-22, appeared in 1994. Heller's
dramatic work includes the play We Bombed in New Haven (1968).
Context
Joseph Heller was
born in Brooklyn in 1923. He served as an Air Force bombardier in World War II,
and has enjoyed a long career as a writer and a teacher. His bestselling books
include Something Happened, Good as Gold, Picture This, God Knows, and Closing
Time--but his first novel, Catch-22, remains his most famous and acclaimed
work.
Written while
Heller worked producing ad copy for a New York City marketing firm, Catch-22
draws heavily on Heller's Air Force experience, and presents a war story that
is at once hilarious, grotesque, bitterly cynical, and utterly stirring. The
novel generated a great deal of controversy upon its publication; critics
tended either to adore it or despise it, and those who hated it did so for the
same reason as the critics who loved it. Over time, Catch-22 has become one of
the defining novels of the twentieth century. It presents an utterly unsentimental
vision of war, stripping all romantic pretense away from combat, replacing
visions of glory and honor with a kind of nightmarish comedy of violence,
bureaucracy, and paradoxical madness.
Unlike other
anti-romantic war novels, such as Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front,
Catch-22 relies heavily on humor to convey the insanity of war, presenting the
horrible meaninglessness of armed conflict through a kind of desperate
absurdity, rather than through graphic depictions of suffering and violence.
Catch-22 also distinguishes itself from other anti-romantic war novels by its
core values: Yossarian's story is ultimately not one of despair, but one of
hope; the positive urge to live and to be free can redeem the individual from
the dehumanizing machinery of war. The novel is told as a disconnected series
of loosely related, tangential stories in no particular chronological order;
the final narrative that emerges from this structural tangle upholds the value
of the individual in the face of the impersonal, collective military mass; at
every stage, it mocks insincerity and hypocrisy even when they appear to be
triumphant.
Summary for
"catch-22"
Chapters 1-5
Yossarian is in a
military hospital in Italy with a liver condition that isn't quite jaundice. He
is not really even sick, but he prefers the hospital to the war outside, so he
pretends to have a pain in his liver. The doctors are unable to prove him
wrong, so they let him stay, perplexed at his failure to develop jaundice.
Yossarian shares the hospital ward with his friend Dunbar; a bandaged, immobile
man called the soldier in white; and a pair of nurses Yossarian suspect hate
him. One day an affable Texan is brought into the ward, where he tries to
convince the other patients that "decent folk" should get extra
votes. The Texan is so nice that everyone hates him. A chaplain comes to see
Yossarian, and although he confuses the chaplain badly during their
conversation, Yossarian is filled with love for him. Less than ten days after
the Texan is sent to the ward, everyone but the soldier in white flees the
ward, recovering from their ailments and returning to active duty.
Outside the
hospital there is a war going on, and millions of boys are bombing each other
to death. No one seems to have a problem with this arrangement except
Yossarian, who once argued with Clevinger, an officer in his group, about the
war. Yossarian claimed that everyone was trying to kill him. Clevinger argued
that no one was trying to kill Yossarian personally, but Yossarian has no
patience for Clevinger's talk of countries and honor and insists that they are
trying to kill him. After being released from the hospital, Yossarian sees his
roommate Orr and notices that Clevinger is still missing. He remembers the last
time he and Clevinger called each other crazy, during a night at the officers'
club when Yossarian announced to everyone present that he was superhuman
because no one had managed to kill him yet. Yossarian is suspicious of everyone
when he gets out of the hospital; he has a meal in Milo's mess hall, then talks
to Doc Daneeka, who enrages Yossarian by telling him that Colonel Cathcart has
raised to fifty the number of missions required before a soldier can be
discharged. The previous number was forty-five. Yossarian has flown forty
missions.
Yossarian talks to
Orr, who tells him an irritating story about how he liked to keep crab apples
in his cheeks when he was younger. Yossarian briefly remembers the time a whore
had beaten Orr over the head with her shoe in Rome outside Nately's whore's kid
sister's room. Yossarian notices that Orr is even smaller than Huple, who lives
near Hungry Joe's tent. Hungry Joe has nightmares whenever he isn't scheduled
to fly a mission the next day; his screaming keeps the whole camp awake. Hungry
Joe's tent is near a road where the men sometimes pick up girls and take them
out to the the tall grass near the open-air movie theater that a U.S.O. troupe
visited that same afternoon. The troupe was sent by an ambitious general named
P.P. Peckem, who hopes to take over the command of Yossarian's wing from
General Dreedle. General Peckem's troubleshooter Colonel Cargill, who used to
be a spectacular failure as a marketing executive and who is now a spectacular
failure as a colonel. Yossarian feels sick, but Doc Daneeka still refuses to
ground him. Doc Daneeka advises Yossarian to be like Havermeyer and make the
best of it; Havermeyer is a fearless lead bombardier. Yossarian thinks that he
himself is a lead bombardier filled with a very healthy fear. Havermeyer likes
to shoot mice in the middle of the night; once, he woke Hungry Joe and caused
him to dive into one of the slit trenchs that have appeared nightly beside
every tent since Milo Minderbinder, the mess officer, bombed the squadron.
Hungry Joe is crazy,
and though Yossarian tries to help him, Hungry Joe won't listen to his advice
because he thinks Yossarian is crazy. Doc Daneeka doesn't believe Hungry Joe
has problems--he thinks only he has problems, because his lucrative medical
practice was ended by the war. Yossarian remembers trying to disrupt the
educational meeting in Captain Black's intelligence tent by asking unanswerable
questions, which caused Group Headquarters to make a rule that the only people
who could ask questions were the ones who never did. This rule comes from
Colonel Cathcart and Lieutenant Colonel Korn, who also approved the skeet
shooting range where Yossarian can never hit anything. Dunbar loves shooting
skeet because he hates it and it makes the time go more slowly; his goal is to
live as long as possible by slowing down time, so he loves boredom and
discomfort, and he argues about this with Clevinger.
Doc Daneeka lives
in a tent with an alcoholic Indian named Chief White Halfoat, where he tells
Yossarian about some sexually inept newlyweds he had in his office once. Chief
White Halfoat comes in and tells Yossarian that Doc Daneeka is crazy and then
relates the story of his own family: everywhere they went, someone struck oil,
and so oil companies sent agents and equipment to follow them wherever they
went. Doc Daneeka still refuses to ground Yossarian, who asks if he would be
grounded if he were crazy. Doc Daneeka says yes, and Yossarian decides to go
crazy. But that solution is too easy: there is a catch. Doc Daneeka tells Yossarian
about Catch-22, which holds that, to be grounded for insanity, a pilot must ask
to be grounded, but that any pilot who asks to be grounded must be sane.
Impressed, Yossarian takes Doc Daneeka's word for it, just as he had taken
Orr's word about the flies in Appleby's eyes. Orr insists there are flies in
Appleby's eyes, and though Yossarian has no idea what Orr means, he believes
Orr because he has never lied to him before. They once told Appleby about the
flies, so that Appleby was worried on the way to a briefing, after which they
all took off in B-25s for a bombing run. Yossarian shouted directions to the
pilot, McWatt, to avoid antiaircraft fire while Yossarian dropped the bombs.
Another time while they were taking evasive action Dobbs went crazy and started
screaming "Help him," while the plane spun out of control and
Yossarian believed he was going to die. In the back of the plane, Snowden was
dying.
Chapters 6-10
Hungry Joe has his
fifty missions, but the orders to send him home never come, and he continues to
scream all through every night. Doc Daneeka persists in feeling sorry for
himself while ignoring Hungry Joe's problems. Hungry Joe is driven crazy by
noises, and is mad with lust--he is desperate to take pictures of naked women,
but the pictures never come out. He pretends to be an important Life magazine
photographer, and the irony is that he really was a photographer for Life
before the war. Hungry Joe has flown six tours of duty, but every time he
finishes one Colonel Cathcart raises the number of missions required before
Hungry Joe is sent home. When this happens, the nightmares stop until Hungry
Joe finishes another tour. Colonel Cathcart is very brave about sending his men
into dangerous situations--no situation is too dangerous, just as no ping-pong
shot is too hard for Appleby. One night Orr attacked Appleby in the middle of a
game; a fight broke out, and Chief White Halfoat busted Colonel Moodus, General
Dreedle's son-in-law, in the nose. General Dreedle enjoyed that so much he kept
calling Chief White Halfoat in to repeat the performance--but the Indian
remains a marginal figure in the camp, much like Major Major, who was promoted
to squadron commander while playing basketball and who has been ostracized ever
since. Also, Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen explains to Yossarian how Catch-22 requires
him to fly the extra missions Colonel Cathcart orders, even though
Twenty-Seventh Air Force regulations only demand forty missions.
Yossarian's pilot,
McWatt, is possibly the craziest of all the men, because he is perfectly sane
but he does not mind the war. He is smiling and polite and loves to whistle
show tunes. He is impressed with Milo--but not as impressed as Milo was with
the letter Yossarian got from Doc Daneeka about his liver, which ordered the mess
hall to give Yossarian all the fresh fruit he wanted, which, in turn, Yossarian
refused to eat, because if his liver improved he couldn't go to the hospital
whenever he wanted. Milo is involved in the black market, and he tries to
convince Yossarian to go in with him in selling the fruit, but Yossarian
refuses. Milo is indignant when he learns that a C.I.D. (Criminal Investigation
Division) man is searching for a criminal who has been forging Washington
Irving's name in censored letters--it is Yossarian who used to pass time in the
hospital by writing the letters. But Milo is convinced the C.I.D. man is trying
to set him up because of his black market activity. Milo wants to organize the
men into a syndicate, as he demonstrates by returning McWatt's stolen bedsheet
in pieces--half for McWatt, a quarter for Milo, and so on. Milo has a grasp on
some confusing economics: he manages to make a profit buying eggs in Malta for
seven cents apiece and selling them in Pianosa for five cents apiece.
Not even Clevinger
understands that, but though he is a dope, he usually understands everything,
except why Yossarian insists that so many people are trying to kill him.
Yossarian remembers training in America with Clevinger under Lieutenant
Scheisskopf, who was obsessed with parades, and whose wife, along with her
friend Dori Duz, used to sleep with all the men under her husband's command.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf hated Clevinger, and finally got him sent to trial under
a belligerant colonel. Clevinger is stunned when he realizes that Lieutenant
Scheisskopf and the colonel truly hate him, in a way that no enemy soldier ever
could.
Given a horrible
name at birth because of his father's horrible sense of humor, Major Major
Major was chagrined when, the day he joined the army, he was promoted to Major
by an IBM machine with an equally horrible sense of humor, making him Major
Major Major Major. Major Major Major Major also looks vaguely like Henry Fonda,
and did so well in school that he was suspected of being a Communist and monitored
by the FBI. His sudden promotion stunned his drill sergeant, who had to train a
man who was suddenly his superior officer. Luckily, Major Major applied for
aviation cadet training, and was sent to Lieutenant Scheisskopf. Not long after
arriving in Pianosa, he was made squadron commander by an irate Colonel
Cathcart, after which he lost all his new friends. Major Major has always been
a drab, mediocre sort of person, and had never had friends before; he lapses
into an awkward depression and refuses to be seen in his office except when he
isn't there. To make himself feel better, Major Major forges Washington
Irving's name to official documents. He is confused about everything, including
his official relationship to Major ----- de Coverley, his executive officer: He
doesn't know whether he is Major ----- de Coverlay's subordinate, or vice
versa. A C.I.D. man comes to investigate the Washington Irving scandal, but
Major Major denies knowledge, and the incompetent C.I.D. man believes him--as
does another C.I.D. man who arrives shortly thereafter, then leaves to
investigate the first C.I.D. man. Major Major takes to wearing dark glasses and
a false mustache when forging Washington Irving's name. One day Major Major is
tackled by Yossarian, who demands to be grounded. Sadly, Major Major tells
Yossarian that there is nothing he can do.
Clevinger's plane
disappeared in a cloud off the coast of Elba, and he is presumed dead.
Yossarian finds the disappearance as stunning as that of a whole squadron of
sixty-four men who all deserted in one day. Then he tells ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen
the news, but ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen isn't impressed with the disappearance.
Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen continually goes AWOL, then is required to dig holes and
fill them up again--work he seems to enjoy. One day ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen
nicked a water pipe, and water sprayed everywhere, leading to mass confusion
much like that of the night seven months later when Milo bombed the camp. Word
spread that the water was oil, and Chief White Halfoat was kicked off the base.
Around this time, Appleby tried to turn Yossarian in for not taking his
Atabrine tablets, but the only time he was allowed to go into Major Major's
office was when Major Major wasn't there. Yossarian remembers Mudd, a soldier
who died immediately after arriving at the camp, and whose belongings are still
in Yossarian's tent. The belongings are contaminated with death in the same way
that the whole camp was contaminated before the deadly mission of the Great Big
Siege of Bologna, for which Colonel Cathcart bravely volunteered his men.
During this time even sick men were not allowed to be grounded by doctors. Dr.
Stubbs is overwhelmed with cynicism, and asks what the point is of saving lives
when everyone dies anyway. Dunbar says that the point is to live as long as you
can and forget about the fact that you will eventually die.
Chapters 11-16
Captain Black is
pleased to hear the news that Colonel Cathcart has volunteered the men for the
lethally dangerous mission of bombing Bologna. Captain Black thinks the men are
bastards, and gloats about their terrifying, violent task. Captain Black is
extremely ambitious, and hoped to be promoted to squadron commander; when Major
Major was picked over him, he lapsed into a deep depression, which the Bologna
mission lifts him out of. Captain Black first tried to get revenge on Major
Major by initiating the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade, when he forced all the
men to swear elaborate oaths of loyalty before doing basic things like eating
meals. He refused to let Major Major sign a loyalty oath, and hoped thereby to
make him appear disloyal. The Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was a major event
in the camp, until the fearsome Major ----- de Coverley put a stop to it by
hollering "Give me eat!" in the mess hall without signing an oath.
It rains
interminably before the Bologna mission, and the bombing run is delayed by the
rain. The men all hope it will never stop raining, and when it does, Yossarian
moves the bomb line on the map so that the commanding officers will think
Bologna has already been captured. Then the rain starts again. In the meantime,
Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen tries to sell Yossarian a cigarette lighter, thus going
into competition with Milo as a black market trader. He is aghast that Milo has
cornered the entire world market for Egyptian cotton but is unable to unload
any of it. The men are terrified and miserable over Bologna. Clevenger and
Yossarian argue about whether it is Yossarian's duty to bomb Bologna, and by
the middle of the second week of waiting, everyone in the squadron looks like
Hungry Joe. One night Yossarian, Nately, and Dunbar go for a drunken drive with
Chief White Halfoat; they crash the jeep, and realize it has stopped raining.
Back in the tents, Hungry Joe is trying to shoot Huple's cat, which has been
giving him nightmares, and the men force Hungry Joe to fight the cat fairly.
The cat runs away, and Hungry Joe is the self-satisfied winner; then he goes
back to sleep and has another nightmare about the cat.
Major ----- de
Coverley is a daunting, majestic man with a lion's mane of white hair, an
eagle's gaze, and a transparent eyepatch. Everyone is afraid of him, and no one
will talk to him. His sole duties include travelling to major cities captured
by the Americans and renting rooms for his men to take rest leaves in; he
spends the rest of his time playing horseshoes. He is so good at his room-
renting duties that he always manages to be photographed with the first wave of
American troops moving into a city, a fact which perplexes both the enemy and
the American commanders. Major ----- de Coverley is a force of nature, but when
Yossarian moved the bomb line, he was fooled and traveled to enemy-controlled
Bologna; he still has not returned. Once, Milo approached him on the horseshoe
range and convinced him to authorize Milo to import eggs with Air Force planes.
This elated the men, except for Colonel Cathcart, whose spur-of-the-moment
attempt to promote Major Major failed, unlike his attempt to give Yossarian a
medal some time earlier, which succeeded. Back when Yossarian was brave, he
circled over a target twice in order to hit it; on the second overpass, Mudd
was killed by shrapnel. The authorities didn't know how to rebuke Yossarian for
his foolhardiness, so they decided to stave off criticism by giving him a
medal.
The squadron
finally receives the go-ahead to bomb Bologna, and by this time Yossarian
doesn't feel like going over the target even once. He pretends that his plane's
intercom system is broken and orders his men to turn back. They land at the
deserted airfield just before dawn, feeling strangely morose; Yossarian takes a
nap on the beach and wakes up when the planes fly back. Not a single plane has
been hit. Yossarian thinks that there must have been too many clouds for the
men to bomb the city, and that they will have to make another attempt, but he
is wrong. There was no antiaircraft fire, and the city was bombed with no
losses to the Americans.
Captain Pilchard
and Captain Wren ineffectually reprimand Yossarian and his crew for turning
back, then inform the men that they will have to bomb Bologna again, as they
missed the ammunition dumps the first time. Yossarian confidently flies in,
assuming there will be no antiaircraft fire, and is stunned when shrapnel
begins firing up toward him through the skies. He furiously directs McWatt
through evasive maneuvers, and fights with the strangely cheerful Aarfy until
the bombs are dropped; Yossarian doesn't die, and the plane lands safely. He
heads immediately for emergency rest leave in Rome, where he meets Luciana the
same night.
Luciana is a
beautiful Italian girl Yossarian meets at a bar in Rome. After he buys her
dinner and dances with her, she agrees to sleep with him, but not right
then--she will come to his room the next morning. She does, then angrily
refuses to sleep with Yossarian until she cleans his room--she disgustedly
calls him a pig. Finally, she lets him sleep with her. Afterward, Yossarian
falls in love with her and asks her to marry him; she says she can't marry him
because he's crazy, and he's crazy because he wants to marry her, because no
one in their right mind would marry a girl who wasn't a virgin. She tells him
about a scar she got when the Americans bombed her town. Suddenly, Hungry Joe
rushes in with his camera, and Yossarian and Luciana have to get dressed.
Laughing, they go outside, where they part ways. Luciana gives Yossarian her
number, telling him she expects that he will tear it up as soon as she leaves,
self-impressed that such a pretty girl would sleep with him for free. He asks
her why on Earth he would do such a thing. As soon as she leaves, Yossarian,
self-impressed that such a pretty girl would sleep with him for free, tears up
her number. Almost immediately, he regrets it, and, after learning that Colonel
Cathcart has raised the number of missions to forty, he makes the anguished
decision to go straight to the hospital.
Chapters 17-21
Things are better
at the hospital, Yossarian decides, than they are on a bomb run with Snowden
dying in the back whispering "I'm cold." At the hospital, Death is
orderly and polite, and there is no inexplicable violence. Dunbar is in the
hospital with Yossarian, and they are both perplexed by the soldier in white, a
man completely covered in plaster bandages. The men in the hospital discuss the
injustice of mortality--some men are killed and some aren't, some men get sick
and some don't, with no reference to who deserves what. Some time earlier
Clevinger saw justice in it, but Yossarian was too busy keeping track of all
the forces trying to kill him to listen. Later, he and Hungry Joe collect lists
of fatal diseases with which they worry Doc Daneeka, who is the only person who
can ground Yossarian, according to Major Major. Doc Daneeka tells Yossarian to
fly his fifty-five missions, and he'll think about helping him.
The first time
Yossarian ever goes to the hospital, he is still a private. He feigns an
abdominal pain, then mimics the mysterious ailment of the soldier who saw
everything twice. He spends Thanksgiving in the hospital, and vows to spend all
future Thanksgivings there; but he spends the next Thanksgiving in bed with
Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife, arguing about God. Once Yossarian is
"cured" of seeing everything twice, he is asked to pretend to be a
dying soldier for a mother and father who have traveled to see their son, who
died that morning. Yossarian allows them to bandage his face, and pretends to
be the soldier.
The ambitious
Colonel Cathcart browbeats the chaplain, demanding prayer before each bombing
run, then abandons the idea when he realizes that the Saturday Evening Post,
where he got the idea, probably wouldn't give him any publicity for it. The
chaplain timidly mentions that some of the men have complained about Colonel
Cathcart's habit of raising the number of missions required every few weeks,
but Colonel Cathcart ignores him. On his way home, the chaplain meets Colonel
Korn, Colonel Cathcart's wily, cynical sidekick, who mocks Colonel Cathcart in
front of the chaplain and is highly suspicious of the plum tomato Colonel
Cathcart gave the chaplain. At his tent in the woods, the chaplain encounters
the hostile Corporal Whitcomb, his atheist assistant, who resents him deeply
for holding back his career. Corporal Whitcomb tells the chaplain that a C.I.D.
man suspects him of signing Washington Irving's name to official papers, and of
stealing plum tomatoes. The poor chaplain is very unhappy, helpless to improve
anyone's life.
Colonel Cathcart is
preoccupied with the problem of Yossarian, who has become a real black eye for
him, most recently by complaining about the number of missions, but previously
by appearing naked at his own medal ceremony shortly after Snowden's death.
Colonel Cathcart wishes he knew how to solve the problem and impress General
Dreedle, his commanding officer. General Dreedle doesn't care what his men do,
as long as they remain reliable military quantities. He travels everywhere with
a buxom nurse, and worries mostly about Colonel Moodus, his despised son in
law, whom he occasionally asks Chief White Halfoat to punch in the nose. Once
Colonel Korn tried to undercut Colonel Cathcart by giving a flamboyant briefing
to impress General Dreedle; General Dreedle told Colonel Cathcart that Colonel
Korn made him sick.
Chapters 22-26
Yossarian loses his
nerve on the mission that follows Colonel Korn's extravagant briefing, the
mission where Snowden is killed and spattered all over Yossarian's uniform when
Dobbs goes crazy and seizes the plane's controls from Huple. As he dies,
Snowden pleads with Yossarian to help him; he says he is cold. Dobbs is a
terrible pilot and a wreck of a man, and he later tells Yossarian he plans to
kill Colonel Cathcart before he raises the mission total again; he asks
Yossarian to give him the go-ahead, but Yossarian is unable to do so, so Dobbs
abandons his plan. Yossarian thinks that Dobbs is almost as bad as Orr, with
whom Yossarian and Milo recently took a trip to stock up on supplies. As they
travel, Orr and Yossarian gradually realize the extent of Milo's control over
the black market and vast international influence: he is the mayor of Palermo,
the Assistant Governor-General of Malta, the Vice-Shah of Oran, the Caliph of
Baghdad, the Imam of Damascus, the Sheik of Araby, and is worshipped as a god
in parts of Africa. Each region has embraced him because he revitalized their
economy with his syndicate, in which everybody has a share. Nevertheless,
throughout their trip, Orr and Yossarian are forced to sleep in the plane while
Milo enjoys lavish palaces, and they are finally awakened in the middle of the
night so that Milo can rush his shipment of red bananas to their next stop.
One evening Nately
finds his whore in Rome again after a long search. He tries to convince
Yossarian and Aarfy to take two of her friends for thirty dollars each. Aarfy
objects that he has never had to pay for sex. Nately's whore is sick of Nately,
and begins to swear at him; then Hungry Joe arrives, and the group abandons
Aarfy and goes to the apartment building where the girls live. Here they find a
seemingly endless flow of naked young women; Hungry Joe is torn between taking
in the scene and rushing back for his camera. Nately argues with an old man who
lives at the building about nationalism and moral duty--the old man claims
Italy is doing better than America in the war because it has already been
occupied, so Italian boys are no longer being killed. He gleefully admits to
swearing loyalty to whatever nation happens to be in power. The patriotic,
idealistic Nately cannot believe his ears, and argues somewhat haltingly for
America's international supremacy and the values it represents. But he is
troubled because, though they are absolutely nothing alike, the old man reminds
him of his father.
By April, Milo's
influence is massive. The mess officer controls the international black market,
plays a major role in the world economy, and uses Air Force planes from
countries all over the world to carry shipments of his supplies; the planes are
repainted with an "M & M Enterprises" logo, but Milo continues to
insist that everybody has a share in his syndicate. Milo contracts with the
Germans to bomb the Americans, and with the Americans to shoot down German
planes. German anti-aircraft guns contracted by Milo even shot down Mudd, the
dead man in Yossarian's tent, for which Yossarian holds a grudge against Milo.
Milo wants Yossarian's help concocting a solution for unloading his massive
holdings of Egyptian cotton, which he cannot sell and which threatens to ruin
his entire operation. One evening after dinner, Milo's planes begin to bomb
Milo's own camp: He has landed another contract with the Germans, and dozens of
men are wounded and killed during the attack. Almost everyone wants to end M
& M Enterprises right then, but Milo shows them how much money they have
all made, and the survivors almost all forgive him. While Yossarian sits naked in
a tree watching Snowden's funeral, Milo seeks him out to talk to him about the
cotton; he gives Yossarian some chocolate-covered cotton and tries to convince
him it is really candy. Yossarian tells Milo to ask the government to buy his
cotton, and Milo is struck by the intelligence behind the idea.
The chaplain is
troubled. No one seems to treat him as a regular human being; everyone is
uncomfortable in his presence, he is intimidated by the soldiers--especially
Colonel Cathcart--and he is generally ineffectual as a religious leader. He
grows increasingly miserable, and is sustained solely by the thought of the
religious visions he has seen since his arrival, such as the vision of the
naked man in the tree at Snowden's funeral. Of course, the naked man was Yossarian.
He dreams of his wife and children dying horribly in his absence. He tries to
see Major Major about the number of missions the men are asked to fly, but,
like everyone else, finds that Major Major will not allow him into his office
except when he is out. On the way to see Major Major a second time, the
chaplain encounters Flume, Chief White Halfoat's old roommate who is so afraid
of having his throat slit while he sleeps that he has taken to living in the
forest. The chaplain then learns that Corporal Whitcomb has been promoted to
sergeant by Colonel Cathcart for an idea that the colonel believes will land
him in the Saturday Evening Post. The chaplain tries to mingle with the men at
the officers' club, but Colonel Cathcart periodically throws him out. The
chaplain takes to doubting everything, even God.
The night Nately
falls in love with his whore, she sits naked from the waist down in a room full
of enlisted men playing blackjack. She is already sick of Nately, and tries to
interest one of the enlisted men, but none of them notice her. Nately follows
her out, then to the officers' apartments in Rome, where she tries the same
trick on Nately's friends. Aarfy calls her a slut, and Nately is deeply
offended. Aarfy is the navigator of the flight on which Yossarian is finally
hit by flak; he is wounded in the leg and taken to the hospital, where he and
Dunbar change identities by ordering lower-ranking men to trade beds with them.
Dunbar pretends to be A. Fortiori. Finally they are caught by Nurse Cramer and
Nurse Duckett, who takes Yossarian by the ear and puts him back to bed.
Chapters 27-31
The next morning,
while Nurse Duckett is smoothing the sheets at the foot of his bed, Yossarian
thrusts his hand up her skirt. She shrieks and rushes away, and Dunbar grabs
her bosom from behind. When she is finally rescued by a furious doctor,
Yossarian tries to plead insanity--he says he has a recurring dream about a
fish--so he is assigned an appointment with Major Sanderson, the hospital
psychiatrist. Sanderson is more interested in discussing his own problems than
his patient's. Yossarian's friends visit him in the hospital--Dobbs offers
again to kill Colonel Cathcart--and finally, after Yossarian admits that he
thinks people are trying to kill him and that he has not adjusted to the war,
Major Sanderson decides that Yossarian really is crazy and decides to send him
home. But because of the identity mixup perpetrated by Yossarian and Dunbar
earlier in their hospital stay, there is a mistake, and A. Fortiori is sent home
instead. Furiously, Yossarian goes to see Doc Daneeka, but Doc Daneeka will not
ground Yossarian for reasons of insanity. Who else but a crazy man, he asks,
would go out to fight?
Yossarian goes to
see Dobbs, and tells him to go ahead and kill Colonel Cathcart. But Dobbs has
finished his sixty missions, and is waiting to be sent home; he no longer needs
to kill Colonel Cathcart. When Yossarian says that Colonel Cathcart will simply
raise the number of missions again, Dobbs says he'll wait and see, but that
perhaps Orr would help Yossarian kill the colonel. Orr crashed his plane again
while Yossarian was in the hospital and was fished out of the ocean--none of
the life jackets in his plane worked, because Milo took out the carbon dioxide
tanks to use for making ice-cream sodas. Now, Orr is tinkering with the stove
he is trying to build in his and Yossarian's tent; he suggests that Yossarian
should try flying a mission with him for practice in case he ever has to make a
crash landing. Yossarian broods about the rumored second mission to Bologna.
Orr is making noise and irritating him, and Yossarian imagines killing him,
which Yossarian finds a relaxing thought. They talk about women--Orr says they
don't like Yossarian, and Yossarian replies that they're crazy. Orr tells
Yossarian that he knows Yossarian has asked not to fly with him, and offers to
tell Yossarian the story of why that naked girl was hitting him with her shoe
outside Nately's whore's kid sister's room in Rome. Yossarian laughingly
declines, and the next time Orr goes up he again crashes his plane into the
ocean. This time, his survival raft drifts away from the others and disappears.
The men are
dismayed when they learn that General Peckem has had Scheisskopf, now a
colonel, transferred onto his staff. Peckem is pleased because he thinks the
move will increase his strength compared to that of his rival General Dreedle.
Colonel Scheisskopf is dismayed by the news that he will no longer be able to
conduct parades every afternoon. Scheisskopf immediately irritates his
colleagues in Group Headquarters, and Peckem takes him along for an inspection
of Colonel Cathcart's squadron briefing. At the preliminary briefing, the men
are displeased to learn they will be bombing an undefended village into rubble
simply so that Colonel Cathcart can impress General Peckem with the clean
aerial photography their bomb patterns will allow. When Peckem and Scheisskopf
arrive, Cathcart is angry that another colonel has appeared to rival him. He
gives the briefing himself, and though he feels shaky and unconfident, he makes
it through, and congratulates himself on a job well done under pressure.
On the bombing run,
Yossarian flashes back to the mission when Snowden died, and he snaps. During
evasive action, he threatens to kill McWatt if he doesn't follow orders. He is
worried that McWatt will hold a grudge, but after the mission McWatt only seems
concerned about Yossarian. Yossarian has begun seeing Nurse Duckett, and he
enjoys making love to her on the beach. Sometimes, while they sit looking at
the ocean, Yossarian thinks about all the people who have died underwater,
including Orr and Clevinger. One day, McWatt is buzzing the beach in his plane
as a joke, when a gust of wind causes the plane to drop for a split second--just
long enough for the propellor to slice Kid Sampson in half. Kid Samson's body
splatters all over the beach. Back at the base, everyone is occupied with the
disaster; McWatt will not land his plane, but keeps flying higher and higher.
Yossarian runs down the runway yelling at McWatt to come down, but he knows
what McWatt is going to do, and McWatt does it, crashing his plane into the
side of a mountain, killing himself. Colonel Cathcart is so upset that he
raises the number of missions to sixty-five.
When Colonel
Cathcart learns that Doc Daneeka was also killed in the crash, he raises the
number of missions to seventy. Actually, Doc Daneeka was not killed in the
crash, but the records--which Doc Daneeka, hating to fly, bribed Yossarian to
alter--maintain that the doctor was in the plane with McWatt, collecting some
flight time. Doc Daneeka is startled to hear that he is dead, but Doc Daneeka's
wife in America, who receives a letter to that effect from the military, is
shattered. Heroically, she finds the strength to carry on, and is cheered to
learn that she will be receiving a number of monthly payments from various
military departments for the rest of her life, as well as sizable life
insurance payments from her husband's insurance company. Husbands of her
friends begin to flirt with her, and she dies her hair. In Pianosa, Doc Daneeka
finds himself ostracized by the men, who blame him for the raise in the number
of missions they are required to fly. He is no longer allowed to practice
medicine and realizes that, in one sense, he really is dead. He sends a
passionate letter to his wife begging her to alert the authorities that he is
still alive. She considers the possibility, but after receiving a form letter
from Colonel Cathcart expressing regret over her husband's death, she moves her
children to Lansing, Michigan and leaves no forwarding address.
Chapters 32-37
The cold weather
comes, and Kid Sampson's legs are left on the beach; no one will retrieve them.
The first things Yossarian remembers when he wakes up each morning are Kid
Sampson's legs and Snowden. When Orr never returns, Yossarian is given four new
roommates, a group of shiny-faced twenty- one year-olds who have never seen
combat. They clown around, calling Yossarian "Yo-Yo" and rousing in
him a murderous hatred. Yossarian tries to convince Chief White Halfoat to move
in with them and scare the new officers away, but Halfoat has decided to move
into the hospital to die of pneumonia. Slowly, Yossarian begins to feel more
protective toward the men, but then they burn Orr's birch logs and suddenly
move Mudd's belongings out of the tent--the dead man who has lived there for so
long is abruptly gone. Yossarian panics and flees to Rome with Hungry Joe the
night before Nately's whore finally gets a good night's sleep and wakes up in
love.
In Rome, Yossarian
misses Nurse Duckett and goes searching in vain for Luciana. Nately languishes
in bed with his whore, when suddenly Nately's whore's kid sister dives into bed
with them. Nately begins to cherish wild fantasies of moving his whore and her
sister back to America and bringing the sister up like his own child, but when
his whore hears that he no longer wants her to go out hustling she becomes
furious, and an argument ensues. The other men try to intervene, and Nately
tries to convince them that they can all move to the same suburb and work for
his father. He tries to forbid his whore from ever speaking again to the old
man in the whores' hotel, and she becomes even angrier, but she still misses
Nately when he leaves and is furious with Yossarian when he punches Nately in
the face, breaking his nose.
Yossarian breaks
Nately's nose on Thansksgiving, after Milo gets all the men drunk on bottles of
cheap whiskey. Yossarian goes to bed early, but wakes up to the sound of
machine gun fire. At first he is terrified, but he quickly realizes that a
group of men are firing machine guns as a prank. He is furious, and takes his
.45 in pursuit of revenge. Nately tries to stop him, and Yossarian breaks his
nose. He fires at someone in the darkness, but when a return shot comes
Yossarian recognizes it as Dunbar's. He and Dunbar call out to each other, and
go back to help Nately. They cannot find him, and discover him in the hospital
the next morning. Yossarian feels terribly guilty for having broken Nately's
nose. They encounter the chaplain in the hospital; he has lied to get in,
claiming to have a disease called Wisconsin shingles, and feels wonderful--he
has learned how to rationalize vice into virtue. Suddenly the soldier in white
is wheeled into the room, and Dunbar panics; he begins screaming, and soon
everyone in the ward joins in. Nurse Duckett warns Yossarian that she overheard
some doctors talking about how they planned to "disappear" Dunbar.
Yossarian goes to warn his friend, but cannot find him.
When Chief White
Halfoat finally dies of pneumonia and Nately finishes his seventy missions,
Yossarian prays for the first time in his life, asking God to keep Nately from
volunteering to fly more than seventy missions. But Nately does not want to be
sent home until he can take his whore with him. Yossarian goes for help from
Milo, who immediately goes to see Colonel Cathcart about having himself
assigned to more combat missions. Milo has finally been exposed as the tyrannical
fraud he is; he has no intention of giving anyone a real share of the
syndicate--but his power and influence are at their peak and everyone admires
him. He feels guilty for not doing his duty and flying missions, and asks the
deferential Colonel Cathcart to assign him to more dangerous combat duties.
Milo tells Colonel Cathcart that someone else will have to run the syndicate,
and Colonel Cathcart volunteers himself and Colonel Korn. When Milo explains
the complex operations of the business to Cathcart, the colonel declares Milo
the only man who could possibly run it, and forbids Milo from flying another
combat mission. He suggests that he might make the other men fly Milo's
missions for him, and if one of those men wins a medal, Milo will get the
medal. To enable this, he says, he will ratchet the number of required missions
up to eighty. The next morning the alarm sounds and the men fly off on a
mission that turns out to be particularly deadly. Twelve men are killed,
including Dobbs and Nately.
The chaplain is
devastated by Nately's death. When he learns that twelve men have been killed,
he prays that Yossarian, Hungry Joe, Nately, and his other friends will not be
among them. But when he rides out to the field, he understands from the
despairing look on Yossarian's face that Nately is dead. Suddenly, the Chaplain
is dragged away by a group of military police who accuse him of an unspecified
crime. He is interrogated by a colonel who claims the chaplain has forged his
name in letters--his only evidence is a letter Yossarian forged in the hospital
and signed with the chaplain's name some time ago. Then he accuses the chaplain
of stealing the plum tomato from Colonel Cathcart and of being Washington
Irving. The men in the room idiotically find him guilty of unspecified crimes
they assume he has committed, then order him to go about his business while
they think of a way to punish him. The chaplain leaves and furiously goes to
confront Colonel Korn about the number of missions the men are required to fly.
He tells Colonel Korn he plans to bring the matter directly to General
Dreedle's attention, but the colonel replies gleefully that General Dreedle has
been replaced with General Peckem as wing commander. He then tells the chaplain
that he and Colonel Cathcart can make the men fly as many missions as they want
to make them fly--they've even transferred Dr. Stubbs, who had offerred to
ground any man with seventy missions, to the Pacific.
General Peckem's
victory sours quickly. On his first day in charge of General Dreedle's old
operation, he learns that Scheisskopf has been promoted to lieutenant general
and is now the commanding officer for all combat operations: He is in charge of
General Peckem and his entire group. And he intends to make every single man
present march in parades.
Chapters 38-42
Yossarian marches
around backwards so no one can sneak up behind him and refuses to fly in any
more combat missions. When they are informed of this, Colonel Cathcart and
Colonel Korn decide to take brief pity on Yossarian for the death of his friend
Nately, and send him to Rome, where he breaks the news of Nately's death to
Nately's whore, who tries to kill Yossarian with a potato peeler for bringer
her the bad news. When he resists, she tries to seduce him, then stabs at him
with a knife again when he seems to have relaxed. Nately's whore's kid sister
materializes, and tries to stab Yossarian as well. Yossarian loses patience,
picks up Nately's whore's kid sister and throws her bodily at Nately's whore,
then leaves the apartment. He notices people are staring at him, and suddenly
realizes that he has been stabbed several times and is bleeding everywhere. He
goes to a Red Cross building and cleans his wounds, and when he emerges
Nately's whore is waiting in ambush and tries to stab him again. He punches her
in the jaw, catches her as she passes out and sets her down gently. Hungry Joe
flies him back to Pianosa, where Nately's whore is waiting to kill him with a
steak knife. He eludes her, but she continues to try to kill him at every
opportunity. Yossarian walks around backwards; as word spreads that he has
refused to fly more combat missions, men begin to approach him, only at night,
and to ask him if it's true, and to tell him they hope he gets away with it.
One day Captain Black tells him that Nately's whore and her kid sister have
been flushed out of their apartment by M.P.'s, and Yossarian, suddenly worried
about them, goes to Rome without permission to try to find them.
He travels with
Milo, who is disappointed in him for refusing to fly more combat missions. Rome
has been bombed, and lies in ruins; the apartment complex where the whores
lived is a deserted shambles. Nately finds the old woman who lived in the
complex sobbing; she tells Yossarian that the only right the soldiers had to
chase the girls away was the right of Catch-22, which says "they have a
right to do anything we can't stop them from doing." Yossarian asks if
they had Catch-22 written down, and if they showed it to her; she says that the
law stipulates that they don't have to show her Catch-22, and that the law that
says so is Catch-22. She says that the her old man is dead. Yossarian goes to
Milo and says that he will fly as many more combat missions as Colonel Cathcart
wants if Milo uses his influence to help him track down the kid sister. Milo
agrees, but becomes distracted when he learns about huge profits to be made in
trafficking illegal tobacco. He slinks away, and Yossarian is left to wander
the dark streets through a horrible night filled with grotesqueries and
loathsome sights; he returns to his apartments late in the night to find that
Aarfy has raped and killed a maid. The M.P.'s burst in. They apologize to Aarfy
for intruding, and arrest Yossarian for being in Rome without a pass.
Back at Pianosa, Colonel
Cathcart and Colonel Korn offer Yossarian a deal: they will allow him never to
fly another combat mission and will even send him home, if only he will agree
to like them. He will be promoted to major and all he will have to do is to
make speeches in America in support of the military and the war effort, and in
support of the two colonels in particular. Yossarian realizes it is a hideous
deal and a frank betrayal of the men in his squadron, who will still have to
fly the eighty missions, but he convinces himself to take the deal anyway, and
is filled with joy at the prospect of going home. On his way out of Colonel
Cathcart's office, Nately's whore appears, disguised as a private, and stabs
him until he falls unconscious.
In the hospital, a
group of doctors argues over Yossarian while the fat, angry colonel who
interrogated the chaplain interrogates him. Finally the doctors knock him out
and operate on him; when he awakes, he dimly perceives visits from Aarfy and
the chaplain. He tells the chaplain about his deal with Cathcart and Korn, then
assures him that he isn't going to do it. He vaguely remembers a malignant,
almost supernatural man jeering at him "We've got your pal" shortly
after his operation,. He then and he tells the chaplain that his
"pal" must have been one of his friends who was killed in the war. He
realizes that his only friend still living is Hungry Joe, and but then the
chaplain tells him that Hungry Joe has died--in his sleep, with Huple's cat on
his face. Later, Yossarian wakes up to find a mean-looking man in a hospital
gown leering saying "We've got your pal." He asks who his pal is, and
the man tells Yossarian that he'll find out. Yossarian lunges for him, but the
man glides away and vanishes. He flashes back to the scene of Snowden's death,
which he relives in all its agony--Snowden smiling at him wanly, whimpering
"I'm cold," Yossarian reassuring him and trying to mend the wound
until he opens up Snowden's flak suit and Snowden's insides spill out all over
him. He then --and remembers the secret he had read in those entrails:
"The spirit gone, man is garbage." man is matter, and without the
spirit he will rot like garbage.
In the hospital,
Yossarian tries to explain to Major Danby why he can no longer go through with
the deal with Cathcart and Korn: he won't sell himself so short, and he won't
betray the memory of his dead friends. He tells Danby he plans to run away, but
Danby tells him there is no hope, and he agrees. Suddenly the chaplain bursts
in with the news that Orr has washed ashore in Sweden. Yossarian realizes that
Orr must have planned his escape all along, and joyfully decides there is hope
after all. He has the chaplain retrieve his uniform, and decides to desert the
army and run to Sweden, where he can save himself from the madness of the war.
As he steps outside, Nately's whore tries to stab him again, and he runs into
the distance.
CHARACTERS’ PROFILE
Yossarian - The
protagonist and hero of the novel. Yossarian is a captain in the Air Force and
a lead bombardier in his squadron, but he hates the war. His powerful desire to
live has led him to the conclusion that millions of people are trying to kill
him, and he has decided either to live forever or, ironically, die trying.
Milo Minderbinder -
The fantastically powerful mess officer, Milo controls an international black
market syndicate and is revered in obscure corners all over the world. He
ruthlessly chases after profit and bombs his own men as part of a contract with
Germany. Milo insists that everyone in the squadron will benefit from being
part of the syndicate, and that "everyone has a share."
Colonel Cathcart -
The ambitious, unintelligent colonel in charge of Yossarian's squadron. Colonel
Cathcart wants to be a general, and he tries to impress his superiors by
bravely volunteering his men for dangerous combat duty whenever he gets the
chance. He continually raises the number of combat missions required of the men
before they can be sent home. Colonel Cathcart tries to scheme his way ahead;
he thinks of successful actions as "feathers in his cap" and
unsuccessful ones as "black eyes."
The Chaplain - The
timid, thoughtful chaplain who becomes Yossarian's friend. He is haunted by a
sensation of deja vu and begins to lose his faith in God as the novel
progresses.
Hungry Joe - An
unhinged member of Yossarian's squadron. Hungry Joe is obsessed with naked
women, and he has horrible nightmares on nights when he isn't scheduled to fly
a combat mission the next morning.
Nately - A
good-natured nineteen year-old boy in Yossarian's squadron. Nately comes from a
wealthy home, falls in love with a whore, and generally tries to keep Yossarian
from getting into trouble.
Nately's whore -
The beautiful whore Nately falls in love with in Rome. After a good night's
sleep, she falls in love with Nately as well. When Yossarian tells her about
Nately's death, she begins a persistent campaign to ambush Yossarian and stab
him to death.
Clevinger - An
idealistic member of Yossarian's squadron who argues with Yossarian about
concepts such as country, loyalty, and duty, in which Clevinger firmly
believes. Clevinger's plane disappears inside a cloud during the Parma bomb
run, and he is never heard from again.
Doc Daneeka - The
medical officer. Doc Daneeka feels very sorry for himself because the war
interrupted his lucrative private practice in the States, and he refuses to
listen to other people's problems. Doc Daneeka is the first person to explain
Catch-22 to Yossarian.
Dobbs - A co-pilot,
Dobbs seizes the controls from Huple during the mission to Avignon, the same
mission on which Snowden dies. Dobbs later develops a plan to murder Colonel
Cathcart, and eventually awaits only Yossarian's go-ahead to put it in action.
McWatt - A
cheerful, polite pilot who often pilots Yossarian's planes. McWatt likes to
joke around with Yossarian, and sometimes buzzes the squadron. One day he
accidentally flies in too low, and slices Kid Sampson in half with his
propellor; he then commits suicide by flying his plane into a mountain.
Major - The supremely mediocre squadron commander.
Born Major Major Major, he is promoted to major on his first day in the army by
a mischievous computer. Major Major is painfully awkward, and will only see
people in his office when he isn't there.
Aarfy - Yossarian's
navigator. Aarfy infuriates Yossarian by pretending he cannot hear Yossarian's
orders during bomb runs. Toward the end of the novel, Aarfy stuns Yossarian
when he rapes and murders the maid of the officers' apartments in Rome.
Orr - Yossarian's
often maddening roommate. Orr almost always crashes his plane or is shot down
on combat missions, but he always seems to survive.
Appleby - A
handsome, athletic member of the squadron and a superhuman ping-pong player.
Orr enigmatically says that Appleby has flies in his eyes.
Captain Black - The
squadron's bitter intelligence officer. He wants nothing more than to be
squadron commander. Captain Black exults in the men's discomfort and does
everything he can increase it; when Nately falls in love with a whore in Rome, Captain
Black begins to buy her services regularly just to taunt him.
Colonel Korn -
Colonel Cathcart's wily, cynical sidekick.
Major de Coverley - The fierce, intense executive
officer for the squadron. Major ----- de Coverley is revered and feared by the
men--they are even afraid to ask his first name-- though all he does is play
horseshoes and rent apartments for the officers in cities taken by American
forces. When Yossarian moves the bomb line on a map to make it appear that
Bologna has been captured, Major ----- de Coverely disappears in Bologna trying
to rent an officers' apartment.
Major Danby - The
timid operations officer. Before the war, he was a college professor; now, he
does his best for his country. In the end, he helps Yossarian escape.
General Dreedle -
The grumpy old general in charge of the wing in which Yossarian's squadron is
placed. General Dreedle is the victim of a private war waged against him by the
ambitious General Peckem.
Nurse Duckett - A
nurse in the Pianosa hospital who becomes Yossarian's lover.
Dunbar -
Yossarian's friend, the only other person who seems to understand that there is
a war going on. Dunbar has decided to live as long as possible by making time
pass as slowly as possible, so he treasures boredom and discomfort. He is
mysteriously "disappeared" as part of a conspiracy toward the end of
the novel.
Chief White Halfoat
- An alcoholic Indian from Oklahoma who has decided to die of pneumonia.
Havermeyer - A
fearless lead bombardier. Havermeyer never takes evasive action, and he enjoys
shooting field mice at night.
Huple - A fifteen
year-old pilot; the pilot on the mission to Avignon on which Snowden is killed.
Huple is Hungry Joe's roommate, and his cat likes to sleep on Hungry Joe's
face.
Washington Irving -
A famous American author whose name Yossarian signs to letters during one of
his many stays in the hospital. Eventually, military intelligence believes
Washington Irving to be the name of a covert insubordinate, and two C.I.D.
(Criminal Investigation Division) men are dispatched to ferret him out of the
squadron.
Luciana - A
beautiful girl Yossarian meets, sleeps with, and falls in love with during a
brief period in Rome.
Mudd - Generally
referred to as "the dead man in Yossarian's tent," Mudd was a
squadron member who was killed in action before he could be processed as an
official member of the squadron. As a result, he is listed as never having
arrived, and no one has the authority to move his belongings out of Yossarian's
tent.
Lieutenant
Scheisskopf - Later Colonel Scheisskopf and eventually General Scheisskopf. He
helps train Yossarian's squadron in America and shows an unsettling passion for
elaborate military parades. ("Scheisskopf" is German for
"shithead.")
The Soldier in
White - A body completely covered with bandages in Yossarian and Dunbar's ward
in the Pianosa hospital.
Snowden - The young
gunner whose death over Avignon shattered Yossarian's courage and opened his
eyes to the madness of the war. Snowden died in Yossarian's arms with his
entrails splattered all over Yossarian's uniform, a trauma which is gradually
revealed throughout the novel.
Corporal Whitcomb -
Later Sergeant Whitcomb, the chaplain's atheist assistant. Corporal Whitcomb
hates the chaplain for holding back his career, and makes the chaplain a
suspect in the Washington Irving scandal.
ex-P.F.C.
Wintergreen - The mail clerk at the Twenty-Seventh Air Force Headquarters,
Wintergreen is able to intercept and forge documents, and thus wields enormous
power in the Air Force. He continually goes AWOL (Absent Without Leave), and is
continually punished with loss of rank.
General Peckem -
The ambitious special operations general who plots incessantly to take over General
Dreedle's position.
Kid Sampson - A
pilot in the squadron. Kid Sampson is sliced in half by McWatt's propeller when
McWatt jokingly buzzes the beach with his plane.
Lieutenant Colonel
Korn - Colonel Cathcart's wily, condescending sidekick.
Colonel Moodus -
General Dreedle's son-in-law. General Dreedle despises Colonel Moodus, and
enjoys watching Chief White Halfoat bust him in the nose.
Flume - Chief White
Halfoat's old roommate who is so afraid of having his throat slit while he
sleeps that he has taken to living in the forest.
Dori Duz - A friend
of Scheisskopf's wife. Together, they sleep with all the men training under him
while he is stationed in the U.S.
Список литературы
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