Catch 22 and a few good men

Catch 22 and a few good men

Catch-22 is a novel about the Second World War. It is set on the island of Pianosa, which is off the coast of Italy. It is set in the end of the war while the Germans are on the run and being pushed out of Italy. The book focuses on a bomb group, more specifically a squadron in which a bombardier named Yossarian is assigned to. Yossarian is very upset because all these people he doesn’t even know (the Germans) are trying to kill him.

The novel is very hard to understand because of the way it is written. It is helpful in books about the military to have a time-date group so you know what is going on. This book doesn’t have that and is so full of flash backs and flash-forwards that it made my head spin. It wasn’t poorly written but it was hard follow. It has many technical errors such as having helicopters for search and rescue while helicopters weren’t used in military service until the Korean War. The story is a good one but paints a picture of military life as a joke almost. Most of the servicemen in this book had no discipline and did pretty much as they pleased.

Yossarian goes through the whole story trying to get out of his squadron and go home. His problem is the commander of the group keeps raising the number of missions required to fly before the rotate home. Every time he gets close the raise the number on him again. Through it all he tries all these schemes to get sent home he acts sick and tries to act crazy. When he tries to acts crazy he thinks that he has a perfect plan to get sent home since there was a rule that anyone who was crazy was unfit to serve in the rigors of combat, but the rule said they had to ask to be grounded. When he goes to get himself grounded he discovers there is a catch. Catch-22 says that anyone who asks to be grounded is not crazy because recognizing danger is the process of a rational mind and anyone with a rational mind is not crazy. That is the main story line of the book.