A week later, Dufiy summons Jack to see him. He offers Jack his job back,
with a substantial raise over Jack's already substantial income. Jack
refuses, and tells Tiny he knows about his role in Willie's death. Tiny is
stunned, and frightened, and when Jack leaves he feels heroic. But his
feeling of moral heroism quickly dissolves into an acidic bitterness,
because he realizes he is trying to make Tiny the sole villain as a way of
denying his own share of responsibility. Jack withdraws into numbness, not
even opening a letter from Anne when he receives it. He receives a letter
from Sadie with her statement, saying that she is moving away and that she
hopes Jack will let matters drop--Tiny has no chance to win the next
gubernatorial election anyway, and if Jack pursues the matter Anne's name
will be dragged through the mud. But Jack had already decided not to pursue
it.
At the library Jack sees Sugar-Boy, and asks him what he would do if he
learned that there was a man besides Adam who was responsible for Willie's
death. Sugar-Boy says he would kill him, and Jack nearly tells him about
Tiny's role. But he decides not to at the last second, and instead tells
Sugar-Boy that it was a joke. Jack also goes to see Lucy, who has adopted
Sibyl Frey's child, which she believes is Tom's. She tells Jack that Tom
died of pneumonia shortly after the accident, and that the baby is the only
thing that enabled her to live. She also tells him that she believes--and
has to believe--that Willie was a great man. Jack says that he also
believes it.
Jack goes to visit his mother at Burden's Landing, where he learns that she
is leaving Theodore Murrell, the Young Executive. He is surprised to learn
that she is doing so because she loved Judge Irwin all along. This
knowledge changes Jack's long-held impression of his mother as a woman
without a heart, and helps to shatter his belief in the Great Twitch. At
the train station, he lies to his mother, and tells her that Judge Irwin
killed himself not because of anything that Jack did, but because of his
failing health. He thinks of this lie as his last gift to her.
After his mother leaves, he goes to visit Anne, and tells her the truth
about his parentage. Eventually, he and Anne are married, and in the early
part of 1939, when Jack is writing his story, they are living in Judge
Irwin's house in Burden's Landing. The Scholarly Attorney, now frail and
dying, lives with them. Jack is working on a book about Cass Mastern, whom
he believes he can finally understand. After the old man dies and the book
is finished, Jack says, he and Anne will leave Burden's Landing--stepping
"out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time."
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
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