I last read this book back when I was in junior high school and now realize that either I, or the book, haven’t aged well. Although many people more famous than me love the book, I found it a bit of a slog. But there are still gems buried inside.
In brief, the book follows the exploits of characters in a military aircraft squadron, based in Italy, during World War II. Key themes include the following:
- Difficulties in dealing with bureacracy
- Inadequate leadership
- Immoral decisions associated with making money
- Fear of death
As a literary project, I think it would are interesting to scour the book and look for Catch-22’s (statements that conflict with each other) or other non sensical statements. The book is full of them! I wish I would have thought of this when first starting the book.
The main Catch-22 in the book is that an aviator can’t fly if they are crazy. But if they don’t want want to fly because it’s dangerous to fly bombing missions in a war zone, this proves that they are thinking rationally, and aren’t crazy, therefore they have to fly.
Here’s an example of a non-sensical statement (p. 347). “They were the most depressing group of people Yossarian had ever been with. They were always in high spirits.”
The author, Joseph Heller, sometimes uses wonderful phrasing and language. Here are a few examples.
p. 52 “It was a desolate, cratered face, sooty with care, like an abandoned mining town.”
p. 68 “In short, Clevinger was one of those people with lots of intelligence and no brains.”
p. 82 “Major Major’s father was a towering gaunt man in heavy shoes and a black woolen suit”
p. 82 “People who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was”
p. 267 “There was no way of really knowing anything he knew, not even that there was no way of really knowing anything.”
p. 319. “My only fault is that I have no faults.”
p. 320 “Nothing we do in this large department of ours is really very important, and there’s never any rush. On the other hand, it is important that we let people know that we do a great deal of it.”
p. 399 “Now that he’s dead, I guess it doesn’t mater any more whether I’m a better Ping-Pong player or not, does it?”
p. 346 “He was wide awake and he knew that he was a prisoner in one of those sleepless, bedridden nights that would take an eternity to dissolve into dawn.”