Essay 2 on Catch-22. Essay one can be found here.
What is Catch-22? The fact is that there is no Catch-22, and that in itself is a Catch-22 which is, logically speaking, a Catch-22 of its own. Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is filled to the brim with Catch-22’s, a large portion of them simply left for the reader to identify. Though the novel is filled with definitions of what the actual Catch-22 may be, in the end all that it represents is a hopeless situation; a scenario with either no way out or with a way out that is so revolting that it may as well have never been offered in the first place.
The first major Catch-22 that the reader is presented with is the one offered by Doc Daneeka to Yossarian when the latter is begging the former to ground him. The doctor explains to Yossarian that he can’t ground him because of Catch-22 (Heller 45). When pressed by Yossarian he explains that Catch-22 says that he can only ground crazy people, to which Yossarian responds that he is in fact crazy, which the doctor counters that he can’t be crazy because he doesn’t want to fly anymore and that only a crazy person would want to get back up in the air, so therefore he can’t ground him (46). Yossarian then points out that there are men flying still who are crazy, to which the Doc agrees, to which Yossarian asks why the Doc doesn’t ground them if he knows they’re crazy, to which the Doc counters that if they want to be grounded they should just come and talk to him about it; another implied Catch-22. There is yet a third Catch-22 present in this exchange that isn’t fully revealed until the reader catches up with the aftermath of the “death” of the Doc. It is then revealed, through the anecdote detailing the fate of Daneeka’s replacement, that even though there wasn’t really a formal regulation called Catch-22 keeping Daneeka (a fourth Catch-22) from grounding anyone, he would have faced reprisal from the brass if he followed the actual regulations about keeping the mentally unstable from flying and sent to the Pacific front, which at that time was far more dangerous than the European theatre (389). Out of one exchange, that granted is expanded upon later in the novel, the reader is presented with four separate instances of this arcane regulation, of which the actual existence is dubious at best, haunting the characters, which arguably is its own Catch-22 since there was no actual Catch-22 to begin with; only fears of the doctor that turned out to be well founded (33).
Perhaps the ultimate Catch-22 in the novel is discovered in Yossarian’s own realization that there is no actual Catch-22 when he walks into the old man’s brothel after it had been forcibly cleared out by the MPs who cited Catch-22 as their reason for clearing the place out, and then cited Catch-22 as the reason why they don’t have to explain themselves or Catch-22 to the people they are displacing (407). Perhaps Yossarian knew all along that Catch-22 wasn’t an actual thing to be cited, but at this point in the novel it is crystal clear. This situation itself forms another Catch-22, the one that serves as the entire premise of the novel: the non-existence of a tangible law gives it a power and potency that shows its true purpose; to allow the military to do whatever it wants whenever it wants to whomever it wants to do it to, and there’s not a damn thing Yossarian or any of the other people hurt by it can do about it. Arfy gets away with rape and murder because his victim was thrown out a window after curfew: Catch-22 (419). Cathcart orders the bombing of a civilian target that doesn’t give any benefit to the military other than “bombing patterns” that the general he’s trying to impress isn’t even interested in to begin with: Catch-22 (325). Yossarian can go home, but if he goes home he has to sing praises to Cathcart and Korn, and if he doesn’t he has to face court-martial: Catch-22 (428). For a brief moment when all of these realizations dawn on Yossarian and Catch-22 ceases to be a tangible regulation and turns into the reality of the totalitarian bureaucracy that he has been thrust into and within that ethereal state becomes all the more real, and all the more representative of the very real harm that is falling onto both Yossarian and those around him. Through this existential crisis of being and then ceasing to be Catch-22 gains a much more profound and tangible existence than ever before; one that haunts Yossarian much like it did previously, but with his full awareness of the situation he is in.
Works Cited
Heller, Joseph. Catch-22. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004.
