If you’re going to read Catch-22, you need this info
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller is… unhinged. Singular. Eye-opening. Hilarious. Horrifying. Shocking. Scandalous. Graphic. Eerily relevant.
I have never read anything like it and I doubt I ever will again.
If you’re considering cracking open this book and giving it a whirl, I here to provide you with all the information that I wish I had had ahead of time, spoiler-free.
My goal for this post is to:
1. Let you know what you’re getting yourself into before committing and
2. Make your journey through this book as smooth as possible, should you choose to read it.
What this book is
First of all, you should know that this book is SATIRE.
Meaning, the author intentionally makes the story absurd, humorous, exaggerated, and ironic to slap you in the face with issues they see in society, people, theologies, etc.
Along with that, the tone of this book is darkly humorus.
The setting of the story
Catch-22 takes place near the end of WWII off the coast of Italy at a US bomber base. It is a fictional place and is called Pianosa.
Our hero is Yossarian, an American captain who is so done with this war and is like, “let me get this straight, everyone is trying to kill me and I’m supposed to be okay with this?”
And his commanding officers are like, “You’re at war don’t take it personally, be a patriot. Why aren’t you happy to die for us?” And Yossarian is like “why on earth would I want to die, especially for you? And on and on this question circles throughout the book.
When the book begins, Yossarian has already flown a ton of missions and wants to go home, but one of his commanders keeps increasing the required number of missions for release before anyone can actually make it home.
Some context
Let me be clear. Catch-22 is a DIFFICULT read.
You will be reading the words and individually they will make sense, but when you put them together you will wonder what on earth is going on.
It’s like this hilarious youtube video from Kyle Mooney where you’re like I know what each word by itself means (okay not all the time, Joseph Heller uses a ton of really big words, don’t get hung up on them) but somehow have no idea what is going on. Then you’ll get to the next chapter and will have an “ohhhh moment,” and bit by bit the story will start to take shape.
Personally, I think Heller intentionally confuses you to make you feel as crazy as everyone else seems to believe Yossarian is just because he has a problem with facing death everyday at the bidding of some guys (his commanding officers) with big egos who are fine risking his life in the name of promotions and gold stars for themselves.
To summarize, this is a story about the soliders who bleed and die in war and in the name of their country, and the apathy, beaurocrasy, and promotion seeking people in charge who send them to their graves. It is, as the back of the book says, “ a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as it might look to someone dangerously sane.”
The timeline and characters in Catch-22
The timeline skips all over the place (which I did not realize at first) and there are way too many characters to keep track of.
Almost every chapter is named after a character and will include a bit about them. By the end you’ll have a grip (mostly) on who each person is, but don’t get too hung up on who is who as you start.
To help you out though, I’ll give you a brief overview of the cast.. at least the characters that pop up the most. There are simply too many to list them all.
Yossarian: Our hero. He is constantly in fear for his life, wants to go home, tries to get out of combat constantly. His job is “bombardier” which means he aims and releases bombs on the Germans occupying Italy. He is the moral compass of the story, however he has some major flaws himself.
Clevinger: Yossarian’s friend who is highly educated, and completely bought in to the war. He tries to convince Yossarian of the war’s virtues.
The Chaplain: religious/spiritual leader for the group. He’s a good guy and tries to stop the constant raising of the missions, but is extremely timid and a bit of a coward.
Corporal Whitcomb: The chaplain’s ironically atheist assistant. He’s the worst. Super manipulative and a jerk.
Aarfy: He’s the actual worst. Keep an eye out for him. The least of his crimes are being a huge distraction, no help, and then an antagonist on missions.
Milo Minderbinder: Starts out as a humble mess hall officer which basically means the guy in charge of food and the cafeteria on the base, and becomes black market CEO. Keep an eye on this one too. You’re going to scream.
Orr: A pilot who is notorious for getting hit and crashing into the ocean all the time but somehow always makes it back. He’s got buck teeth, is described as simple minded and goofy. Yossarian is often annoyed with him but also fond of him.
Dunbar: Yossarian’s good friend. He has a similar attitude to the war as Yossarian. He usually joins Yossarian when he tries to get out of flight missions and checks into the hospital instead (a regular occurence).
Colonel Cathcart: One of the main “villains” in the story. Due to his own vanity and desire for promotions, he constantly raises the number of bombing missions that are required before the men can go home. He is Yossarian’s nemesis and the main antagonist.
Doc Daneeka: The extremely ineffective on-base doctor. He fixes nearly every problem by painting the patient’s gums and toes purple with a violet solution.
Nately: One of Yossarian’s good friends in his squadron. Nately comes from an extremely wealthy family. He falls madly in love with a “whore” and wants to marry her.
Chief White Halfoat: A Native American solider. He loves tormenting his roomie, Flume. Chief White Halfoat is sure he (himself) will die from pneumonia eventually.
General Dreedle: The commanding officer at the base on Pianosa. He’s grouchy, hard, and mean. His son-in-law is Colonel Moodus.
Nurse Duckett: A nurse on-base. You’re going to have a lot of big feelings.
McWatt: Yossarian’s pilot and good friend. He loves pulling crazy stunts in the air and it terrifies Yossarian.
Ex-PFC Wintergreen: Wintergreen keeps deserting and then coming back and consequentially gets demoted over and over and consequentially his title is Ex-PFC. Confusing, I know. Even though he’s demoted, he’s in charge of the mail and that job ends up being pretty over powered.
Major Major Major Major: His dad named him Major Major Major as a cruel joke. This guy wants to fit in so badly but he gets promoted to Major (the commander of the squadron) very arbitrarily and so no one wants to be his friend.
(Lieutenant) Colonel Korn: This guy think of himself as highly intelligent and clever. He’s also a jerk. He’s Colonel Cathcart’s assistant and to be fair, is smarter than Cathcart.
Mudd: The dead guy in Yossarian’s tent. Shocking, I know. No one wants to take responsibility for him so in the tent he stays.
General Peckham: He’s the general over special operations. For some reason this guy really wants to take General Dreedle’s job of being the commanding officer of the Pianosa base and is always plotting to get it.
Snowden: Radio gunner, meaning he is in control of communications on the bombing missions and of firing defensive shots at the enemy. Keep an eye on this one.
C.I.D. Investigators: Stands for criminal investigation division. They come looking for someone forging the name “Washington Irving” (aka the classic American author of Rip Van Winkle) on mail. They are idiots.
Who outranks who
I was so lost when it came to Air force terminology and military rank in general (no pun intended) because I knew nothing about it.
In case you’re like me, I’ll lay it out for you here.
First you should understand that enlisted men are the men doing the fighting and the officers are (mostly) the ones giving orders to the men doing the fighting.
Here’s the pecking order of the officers mentioned in Catch-22:
General
Lieutenant General
Colonel
Lieutenant Colonel
Major
Captain (Yossarian is a captain but he does fight like the enlisted men)
Lieutenant (also does the fighting)
The treatment of women in Catch-22
Before you crack open this book, you MUST be prepared for this…
In Catch-22, women are objectified and treated so badly.
They are almost always (if not always) treated as sexual objects. It is disturbing, brutal, and disgusting and you will FEEL that as you read.
Many people take this treatment of women to mean Heller is a complete misogynist, but I owe no allegiance to Heller and I am telling you there ain’t no way.
Friends, this is SATIRE.
Meaning everything is exaggerated in order to make a point as sharp as a pairing knife.
This is the best explanation I have found, and I had to DIG because a lot of people take this book literally and think Heller just hates women.
“We can say that Yossarian’s treatment of women is a symptom of the war…. but the novel is also making the deeper point that in our insane society men’s treatment of women doesn’t figure in our assessment of their character. Yossarian himself, in the climactic chapter The Eternal City, reflects: ‘It was a man’s world.’” — Jamie Q. Roberts in an article called Catch-22: the great anitwar novel.
Yossarian himself, who is the “hero” also treats women like objects, especially in one very disturbing chapter.
And I do think the book is showing the depravity and dehumanization that comes from war and how it affects men and women differently. But even more than that, I agree with Roberts and think that exaggerating the abuse of women from even the good guys to show that society’s treatment of women is garbage.
The reader is SUPPOSED to be outraged, to lead them to consider how this treatment of women is reflected in their own societies.
Spark Notes for the win
As I’ve mentioned, reading a text like this is really hard.
When I was about halfway through, I felt like there were a lot of holes in my understanding of what the heck was going on.
After I made more progress in the book, I realized that the author was confusing me intentionally.
This books is an onion, and as you keep reading, you will understand more and more.
But before I knew that, I was discouraged and had the idea to pull up good old Spark Notes.
Spark Notes was a game changer!
I was able to get a lot more out of the book, appreciate literary devices and symbols I had missed, and relax more as I read it because I knew I could reference Spark Notes after finishing a difficult chapter.
So no shame in using Spark Notes, for this or any literary text… in fact I would encourage it!
PS I found Spark Notes to be much more robust than Cliff Notes or really anything else (if you don’t want spoilers).
Would I recommend Catch-22?
After I finished this book, my brother asked me, “Do you feel enlightened? Or burdened with knowledge?”
My answer would be a bit of both.
This book is a masterpiece, no doubt about it.
The satire will have you laughing out loud in one minute, and gasping in shock the next.
And Heller will plant the ideas in your own brain in a way that will make you think the ideas are actually your own.
Additionally, the relevence and timelesness (unfortunatley) blew me away. Heller gives us words for things that are happening in real life in the world.
Some of the almost exact same rhetoric that is used in the book is used in politics today, which was in a weird way comforting but also disconcerting at the same time.
I was also so impressed at the way he made ME feel insane while reading the book by using a scattered timeline and a million characters. And the way he pulls it all together in the end is, in my opinion, unparalleled.
I think this book is important and shares in great detail a very important message.
However, and I can’t stress this enough, this book is NOT for the faint of heart or the sensitive.
I don’t regret reading it, and I will never forget this book.
That being said, I AM sensitive to the media I consume and I wish I had a guide like this so I could have gone into it with eyes open instead of just sending it… which is why I made this! It’s so hard to do research on a book ahead of time without getting spoilers!
I will say that if I had known how bleak and disturbing parts of it would be, I don’t know that I would have read it. I probs wouldn’t have. So consider yourself warned.
Also, if you are prone to be sent into a spiral of depression and doom and gloom, this book isn’t for you either. Because as I mentioned earlier, it’s eerily releant.
BUT, if you can get past the swamp and want to learn the lessons this book holds, you will be well rewarded for reading it.
And if you do read it you have to message me! I want to know all your thoughts.
