Sheer madness, that’s how one gets to reprise Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, a WWII satirical narration of the epic adventures of Captain John Yossarian, a bombardier with the U.S. Army Air Corps and his confreres in a US Army squadron based in Italy. The storyline itself is in a non-chronological form and makes little sense at the start with its muzzy, slaphappy story-telling from the point of view of its characters. 

With a linear-relative it’s easy to draw a straight line from the start to the end, but in Heller’s Catch 22, the non-linear narrative jumps to different points in time and forces the reader through a zig-zag of curling, looping flash-backs and flash-forwards making sense out of its senseless characters, scenes and dialogues as the plot advances to its climax. 

Captain John Yossarian believes everyone is out to kill him or is conspiring to and sees everyone as his enemy.

“The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on.”

He sees people shooting at him for no reason as he drops bombs on them from his aircraft. He sees his commanding officers as people out to kill him by sending him on dangerous missions to bomb other people who he does not know only so they can become generals.

Yossarian creates reasons to be hospitalised feigning a non-existent liver-disease which never heals nor alleviates enough to get him to be discharged. He pleads insanity with Doc Daneeka, the only doctor at the base in charge of the medical conditions of the conscripts.  Doc Daneeka lets  Yossarian know of the incongruent rule which prevents Yossarian from being relieved of flying dangerous bombing missions endangering his life. Only the insane would fly into hostile territory to be shot at. But only the sane would know the dangers of the mission and request to be grounded. Hence a request to be grounded would prove your sanity nullifying your plea of insanity. Madness it is. Madness it is not. Catch-22. 

“There’s a rule saying I have to ground anyone who’s crazy… There’s a catch. Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn’t really crazy.”

“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” “It’s the best there is” 

Yossarian finds himself in situations he does not want to be a part of. And always failing at his attempts to be grounded to stay alive even as his commanding officer keeps bumping up the bombing missions.  The book comes loaded with fascinatingly absurd characters, the enterprising Milo, my favourite among them, trades goods with himself seemingly making a profit for the syndicate and has a disastrous end having Germans bomb his own base and another desperate situation where he has to offload entire lots of Egyptian cotton which he tries to sell in the form of chocolate dipped cotton-balls.

Having flown a  B-25 bombardier for the US Army Air Corp during WWII from the Italian frontlines Heller draws from his personal experience through the eyes of the characters of Catch-22 the insanity of war with dark humour and satire. Catch-22 breaks from the conventional  moulds of heroism where the hero runs into dangerous situations to bravely fight-off enemies rather than walking away from danger as common sense dictates.

“There’s nothing negative about running away to save my life.”

Catch-22 is a sharp commentary on the politics, bureaucracy and economics of war and the worthlessness of life. As a reader I would advise you to take in the book slowly and take breaks to give time to absorb the playful sentences and humour injected with subtle sarcasm. Many of you may find the start of Catch-22 to be utter confusion, but if you dig in you will find an exit from the madness into the lucid.  Catch-22 is a bottomless well filled with thought provoking passages on life, death and more. What could be a more profound than- “The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on.” (Repetitious sentences can be frustrating. Q.E.D)

Sentences which make you stop and think. “He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.” And brilliance in the simplicity of human interactions undoing and breaking down philosophical exchanges- “What do you do when it rains?” The captain answered frankly. “I get wet.” 

On patriotism and sacrifice- “What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can’t all be worth dying for.”

On mediocrity of humans-”Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.” A parody of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night- ”Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.” 

Heller’s Catch-22 may not have the craft and often gets tedious and repetitive, but it has a jarring edge which cuts deep.