Situation And Actions In Catch 22 By Joseph Heller

2064 Words5 Pages

Dirk Stephens
Dawn Dayhoff
English 3 Honors
11/24/14

Catch 22, a situation or dilemma where there are two or more rules that create an inescapable situation. In the book Catch 22 the main character Yossarian is faced with many similar situations in the US Air Force during World WarII. throughout the novel Yossarian and the 256th brigade were faced with many unjust rules, leaders they could not trust, and fight Missions where they were more likely to die then come alive. While this novel did tell an excellent story, most of the scenes weren’t something that actual soldiers would ever have to deal with. Soldiers in World War II never faced the harsh rules, leaders, and conditions that were depicted in Joseph Heller 's book.
In the book Catch …show more content…

This quote from a research article about the book Catch 22 specifically addresses this exact rule. This catch-22 represents Yossarian’s overall Air Force experience. “Actions do not necessarily proceed from reason, and all logical assertions seem to negate themselves. The words and actions of commanding officers appear to possess no rationale.” (Catch 22 Literature) The author of this article was basically saying that while the catch 22’s of the novel were humorous and added a clear purpose to the novel they were not at all realistic to what actually would have happened during World War II. Another catch 22 type rule was the amount of missions that the men had to fly in order to be transferred back to the United States. The problem was that the amount of missions was continually raised by Colonel Cathcart who has been analyzed by many writers specifically in this excerpt “Cathcart is the squadron 's colonel. In order to increase his chances of promotion, Cathcart keeps raising the number of missions the men must fly before getting rotated. Because he is obsessed with being promoted to general.”(Catch 22 Novel) By the end of the book the soldiers of the 256th brigade had to fly 80 missions in order to be transferred. This serves as yet another example of …show more content…

The one example of the fear that came with being a soldier in the 256th brigade can be seen here. “Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn 't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who 's dead.” (Heller 133-134) This excerpt not only shows the fear but also a sense of frustration from Yossarian. He has just got sick of constantly being told to go fight missions where his life was on the line. The actual events in World War II, which were definitely scary, were taken a lot differently by the soldiers. One specific journalist wrote about this.”Ball detailed acts of bravery by Rhode Island soldiers and ambulance corpsmen in the fighting between the Marne and Ourcq rivers as the Allies drove the Germans to retreat.”(LENNON) While that excerpt doesn’t go into the brave acts of the soldiers, the actual soldiers of World War II were a lot more courageous than the ones depicted by Heller. One thing that Joseph Heller was really inaccurate about was the actual military procedure used by the soldiers in Catch 22. “There was no established procedure for evasive action. All you needed was fear, and Yossarian had plenty of that, more fear than Orr or Hungry Joe, more fear even than Dunbar, who had resigned himself submissively to the idea that he must die someday. Yossarian had not resigned himself to that idea, and he bolted for his life wildly on each mission

Open Document