Catch 22

Title: Catch 22

Author: Joseph Heller

Birth Date: 1923

Death Date: December, 1999

Period of Literature:

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1. Main Characters:

a. Yossarian: The protagonist and hero of the noel. Yassarian 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, or die trying.

b. Milo Minderbinder: A 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.

c. Doc Daneeka - The medical officer. Doc Daneeka feels very sory for himself because the war has interrupted his lucrative private practice in the United States, and he refuses to listen to other people's problems. Doc Daneeka is the first person to explain Catch-22 to Yossarian.

d. Colonel Cathcart - The unintelligent officer 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.

e. Major Major Major Major: The supremely mediocre squadron commander; Major Major is awkward and will only see people in his office when he is not there. His promotion to squadron commander distances him from the other soldiers, reducing him to loneliness.

f. Captain Black: Captain black wants nothing more than to be squadron commander. He exults in the men's discomfort and does everything he can to increase it.

2. Minor Characters:

a. The chaplain - A friend of Yossarian. Timid and thoughtful, the chaplain is haunted by a sensation of deja vu and begins to lose his faith in God as the novel progresses. 

b. Hungry Joe: A former photographer for Life magazine, He is obsessed with photographing naked women. He has horrible nightmares on nights when he is not scheduled to fly a combat mission the next morning.

c. McWatt - A cheerful, polite pilot who often flies Yossarian's planes. McWatt likes to joke around with Yossarian and sometimes buzzes the squadron.

d. Dunbar - A friend of Yossarian and 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.

e. Huple - A fifteen-year-old pilot who was flying the mission to Avignon on which Snowden was killed. Huple is Hungry Joe's roommate; his cat likes to sleep on Hungry Joe's face.

f. Snowden - The young gunner whose death over Avignon shattered Yossarian's courage and caused him to experience the shock of war. Snowden died in Yossarian's arms, a trauma that is gradually revealed over the course of the novel

3. The main setting is based upon the closing end of world was

a. Yossarian's growing certainty that he will never be allowed to go home. Alongside Yossarian's certainty is a second subplot that takes place in the past: the bombing run on which Snowden was killed.

4. One Paragraph Plot outline:

DURING THE SECOND HALF of World War II, a soldier named Yossarian is stationed with his Air Force squadron on the island of Pianosa, near the Italian coast in the Mediterranean Sea. Yossarian and his friends endure a nightmarish, absurd existence defined by bureaucracy and violence: they are inhuman resources in the eyes of their blindly ambitious superior officers. The squadron is thrown thoughtlessly into brutal combat situations and bombing runs in which it is more important for the squadron members to capture good aerial photographs of explosions than to destroy their targets. Yossarian seems to realize that there is a war going on; everyone thinks he is crazy when he insists that millions of people are trying to kill him.

5. Symbols:

a. The Soldier in White: a bandage-wrapped, faceless, nameless body that lies in the hospital in the first chapter of the novel, represents the way the army treats men as interchangeable objects. When, months after his death, he is replaced by another, identical soldier in white, everyone assumes it is the same person.

b. Aerial Photographs: The photographs themselves, stand for the way in which the dehumanization of war--in this case, the detachment of the upper levels of military bureaucracy from the tragedy of war--allows for its horrors to be seen merely for their aesthetic effects.

c. deed is, itself, evidence of past evil persisting into the present.

6. Authors Style:

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