#CATCH22 , #AbsurdNovel
Catch-22 transcends the war-novel genre
in that it is an illustration of the absurdity of war, and even more so of life
itself. Even in how the novel is written, with its mindless repetition of words,
complex chronology, and circular logic games, Catch-22 defies convention.
Pivotal events such as Snowden’s death are referred to numerous times until
Heller discloses to us the full story. Heller’s words drip with the bitter irony
of existence. What is humorous on page one becomes horrifying by the final
chapter.
For Heller, the novel itself is
Sartre’s chestnut tree, Camus’ boulder pushed up a hill, Kafka’s trial,
Beckett’s unseen Godot. Catch-22 challenges our preconceived notion that
a novel should follow a chronological line of action and that the conflict in a
novel should be resolved. Heller plays with form; he plays with chronology and time; he defies convention in ways that are reflective of the schools of
thought that were popular during his lifetime. More importantly, Joseph Heller’s
novel proves that one can triumph over this existential predicament, as shown
by the actions of the character of Orr, and less definitively, in the character
of Yossarian. We can outline certain mythic structures within Catch-22.
For example: Replace Sisyphus with Yossarian in Camus’ essay The Myth of Sisyphus. In the Greek myth, Sisyphus is punished for doing a few things
wrong. First, he told secret information about the abduction of Aegina to people
he should not have. Secondly, according to Homer at least, Sisyphus put Death in
chains. Lastly, after Sisyphus dies and lives in the underworld for a while, Pluto
grants Sisyphus permission to return to earth in order to chastise his wife.
Upon this opportunity, Sisyphus is lured by the water, sun, and sea of the warm
and hospitable earth. He refuses to go back to the underworld. Mercury, hearing
about Sisyphus’ disappearance, goes to get him. As punishment Sisyphus must push
a heavy boulder up to the summit of a large hill. When Sisyphusreaches this
point the boulder rolls back down the hill to its initial starting place.
This“futile and hopeless labor” will continue for an eternity, as Sisyphus must
forevermore push his boulder up the hill only to watch it fall back down (Myth
of Sisyphus 88-89).
Yossarian, the protagonist of Catch-22,
faces a similarly Absurd situation. Stationed in Pianosa, a tiny fictional
island off the coast of Italy, Yossarian and his squadron must fly bombing
missions in the Mediterranean during WWII. Every time that Yossarian gets close
to flying the number of missions required to complete his tour of duty, Colonel
Cathcart raises the requirement. Thus, Yossarian is seemingly trapped, forced by
Colonel Cathcart to fly bombing missions over enemy territory for all of
eternity, or at least until the war ends.
A rule called Catch-22
helps Colonel Cathcart perpetuate this absurd reality. Catch-22 states, “a
concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate
was the process of arational mind” (46). Therefore, if you ask to be grounded
from a mission you clearly are not insane because you understand the risks
involved. Crazy soldiers can be grounded: all they have to do is ask. However,
they will never ask because they are crazy and do not realize the dangers involved
in each mission. There are many instances of this sort of spinning
reasonableness,” but this example is perhaps the most important and frequently cited,
as it, at the very least, is the “catch” after which Heller named his novel.
So how well does Yossarian
parallel Sisyphus? The answer is: not completely. While Sisyphus embraces his
absurd condition, Yossarian is looking for a way out of his. However, they both
exist in absurd scenarios. Sisyphus must spend eternity pushing a boulder up a
hill and watching it roll down again. Comparatively, Yossarian must fly a seemingly infinite amount of missions, most of which put him in the line of
fire. Yossarian’s fate could end on any of his missions. Yet, if this does not
happen and Yossarian survives the war, we must ask ourselves: “Does ‘Catch-22’
continue after the war ends?”
Orr, who represents the triumph
over the absurd, crashes his plane on almost every mission. The men of the 256th
squadron think he is either insane or just a bad pilot, and Yossarian even goes
as far as to ask never to fly with Orr again. Little do they know that Orr is
planning something brilliant. The seemingly infantile Orr, with crab apples stuffed
in his cheeks, has actually been practicing landing his plane in the water.
After the 18th crash,” Orr can make the plane touch down like a
butterfly with sore feet. Then, after a long conversation with Yossarian earlier
in the day, Orr’s plane goes down in the waters off the coast of Italy. Alone in
a life raft, Orr drifts away from the rest of his crew, all of which survived
the crash. A search and rescue team comes for them, but Orr has drifted out of
sight. We spend the next 131 pages assuming that Orr is dead. Suddenly, with
only four pages left in the entire novel, Major Danby enters Yossarian’s hospital room with some good news. Orr has washed ashore in Sweden, taking
asylum in the neutral country. Orr is successful in combating the absurd; he
escapes to neutral territory. This is unique in a genre of literature that is
usually so grim. Perhaps this glimmer of hope is uniquely American. If there ever
were a man who was perfectly made for combatting the absurd, it was Orr. Most
importantly, he understands that it is impossible to fight the absurd world in which he lives; the only option is to leave.
Catch-22 contains layer upon layer of existential themes: the passing of time; absurd trials; life as a soldier; even
the novel’s structure and prose style create a certain sense of meaninglessness
that conjures up existentialism. Heller has created Catch-22 a new
American twist on literary existentialism. The resounding hope at the end of Catch-22
can be starkly contrasted with the endings of related existential literature firstly, America has a notion of the singular American Rebel. These
men embody the pioneer spirit and make a habit of getting into trouble.
JamesDean and Clint Eastwood come to mind as prominent American Rebels of
cinema. Secondly, after WWII America assumed the role of world superpower. Catch-22 was written during this period, and thus Heller would have, consciously or
not, placed a bit of this gusto in his work. Thirdly, ever since its founding
days, there has existed a sense of American Exceptionalism in the people of the
United States. The Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville wrote what would become the
best account of the phenomenon of American exceptionalism in his Democracy in
America, noting that America is indeed so exceptional that it is impossible
to compare it to all other democratic nations. Lastly, the overriding optimism
in American culture is reflected in the arts that stem from the manifest Destiny spirit that allowed so many to pack up and makes lives for themselves out west.
The most approachable
representation of this American Existential touch is in the characters of Milo
and his capitalist syndicate called M&M Enterprises. Heller takes the laisse-faire economics that America was mastering in the post-war years and
uses them for absurdity. “Indeed, Milo stands at the end of a long American
tradition of such literary con men” (Potts 75). From Melville’s The
Confidence Man to Fitzgerald’s TheGreat Gatsby, Milo is one of many
swindlers, hustlers, and gamblers on a long list in American Literature. We find
it significant that Heller would link something so prized to Americans as
Capitalism with something so European as Existentialism. Aside from the optimistic ending of Catch-22, this is the best evidence that Heller
produced a uniquely American style of literary existentialism. Despite Milo’s
humble beginning as a mess officer, he comes to power through shady deals with
even shadier people all over the world. Initially purchasing food for his mess hall, Milo expands to weapons and minerals by the end of the novel. Heller
inserts a hilariously rhyming sentence into a conversation between Colonel
Cathcart and Milo on the topic of Milo’s lack of bombing missions (he mostly
flies planes to run his business.)
“The cork?”
“That must go to New York, the
shoes for Toulouse, the ham for
Siam, the nails from Wales, and
the tangerines for New Orleans.”
“Milo”
“We have coals in Newcastle,
sir”
Colonel Cathcart threw up his
hands…. “It’s no use. You’re just
like I am—indispensible!”…. The
whole system would fall apart if
anything happened to you. (373)
Not only is this exchange absurd
in a stylistic sense, it is also absurd in a narrative sense. Heller has made a
mockery of Milo’s beloved syndicate by suggesting that he buys and trades
supplies simply on the basis of whether or not they rhyme with the original or destined name of the city. Milo defends his business contracts more than he defends his
country. So many people are counting on M&M Enterprises—enemies, allies,
mayors, soldiers—that Milomust stays in business so that everyone else can stay
happy. Milo is just a hypocritical businessman, who, along with many others,
built the American economy.
Heller portrays war as
ultimately absurd. He does not provide political reasons or ideals for the war,
what we learn about war instead is that it pays well, that it reduces life by
constantly endangering it, that orders must be followed blindly and that the
reasons behind these orders are aspirations, ideals, and eccentricities.
Soldiers are not meant to fight, win and survive but they are expected to die,
to willingly give up their lives without questioning war or its reasons. The
fact that young men die for the old men in power, presented as it is in the
novel, is not only illogical but also unnatural and absurd.
One of the first aspects of the
novel’s absurdist vision to notice, apart from war, is bureaucracy. Throughout
the novel, bureaucracy seems to be illogical, mad, and absurd. That includes
the military bureaucracy on the one hand and the government on the other. As
Gross puts it “the war in Heller’s novel is a vehicle for bringing the
essential bureaucratic systematization that rules so much of contemporary life
to its highest pitch of lunacy”[6]. In other words, Heller uses his
novel’s war setting to portray a heightened and exaggerated picture of absurd
and illogical bureaucracy.
Situated in the quiet 1950s,
Heller accurately located the problems of the Age, attacked them in a
low-profile manner, and, to some extent, foretold the breakout of the protest
in the 1960s in the novel Catch-22. After a time of acquiescence in the 1950s,
active social protests, for example, the civil rights movement, feminism
movement, anti-war protest, and some counterculture movements at the end of the
1960s, broke out in a wide range. Thomas L. Hartshorne compares Yossarian's
actions with those of the protestors in the early 1960s and states that both of
them spot a limited and realizable goal of protest to make sure they can
accomplish the goal. He says that protestors in the early 1960s "employed
new styles of protest: the sit-in, freedom rides, direct action, nonviolent
resistance, nonviolent resistance, the community organizing of the early years
of the SDS, the idea of participatory democracy. At the same time, there was a
tendency to avoid explicit ideological commitments and the discussion of
long-term blueprints for the wholesale reconstruction of society"[251]. As
the protestors in the early 1960s, Heller also employs new styles of protest.
Instead of exposing the problems of society during the cold war in a harsh way,
he chooses a seemingly lukewarm tone. But by the contrast between the shocking
scenes and the lukewarm tone, Heller makes the effect of such zero-degree
writing success in presenting the destruction McCarthyism and the Cold War
brings to the American society in an ironic way. The irony and the implicit
attacking ideas mark the novel ofCatch-22 with the characteristics of the 1960s.
Conditioned in the 1950s and 1960s, Catch-22 bore the characteristics of both decades, the acquiescence of the former one and the protest of the latter.
Conceiving in the 1950s when the intellectual sphere is under control
politically, Heller took zero-degree writing to be acquiescent while he could
not refrain from attacking it and does so in an implicit way, which conformed
to the protest in the early 1960s and further led to the extreme ways in the late
1960s. By following a zero-degree writing style, he could defy social affairs
while conforming to the social need of being submissive. His attitude in the
novel represented how the spirit changes from submissiveness in the 1950s to
protection in the 1960s. He rarely makes appeals apparently and composes the work
by dialogues and monologues of the figures and objective description. On the
unreasonable rules and shocking scenes which epitomize the real condition in
his decades under the control of power and capitalism, he does not make
comments to correct the corrupt and absurd values, frustrating the readers'
expectations. At the same time, it is recognizable that Heller exposes the
hidden problems of the institutions in a deliberate manner, no matter how lukewarm
his narrative tone is. The tone in Catch-22 is marked by the spirits of the
decades of 1950s and 1960s and records the transition from a submissive decade
to an active one.
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