The Comic Veil of Heller and Vonnegut
The dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its senselessness; to accept it freely, without fear, without illusions—and to laugh at it. —Martin Esslin
MA thesis by
CONTENTS
Introduction 3
Chapter 1: Black Humour and the Absurd 6
Chapter 2: Catch-22 9
Chapter 3: Slaughterhouse-Five 29
Chapter 4: Conclusion 41
INTRODUCTION
In the aftermath to the Second World War a defeatism reigned over the survivors. The good of mankind was questioned and confidence in grand narratives faltered. One sentiment was repeated by all, which was that such a tragedy should never take place again. Intellectuals and politicians cried for reform. One such intellectual was Theodor Adorno, who in his work “Education After Auschwitz” wrote that “[e]very debate about the ideals of education is trivial and inconsequential compared to this single ideal: never again Auschwitz” (1). Auschwitz, in Adorno’s terms, was a “relapse into barbarism” (1). It was not only an unspeakable atrocity the recurrence of which must be prevented, but also a turning point in human history.
Barbarism, Adorno argues, is deeply embedded in society and consequently another genocide is not unlikely. Therefore, an educational reform needs to follow the Second World War, so as to create a climate wherein such cruelty as Auschwitz is not possible. Moreover, Adorno posed his often quoted dictum that:
The critique of culture is confronted with the last stage in the dialectic of culture and barbarism: to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric, and that corrodes also the knowledge which expresses why it has become impossible to write poetry today. (Adorno 1983: 34)
Adorno’s comment suggests that the barbarism of Auschwitz destroyed something
fundamental to culture. Auschwitz caused a relapse into barbarism and put an end to cultured society. Society had become barbaric. Whether it be a societal innocence or a faith in
humanity connected to what Lyotard referred to as grand narratives that was lost, after Auschwitz culture was impossible to maintain and enjoy.
Raul Hilberg, in his essay “I Was Not There”, argues that historical texts also cannot be written, at least not accurately, about the Holocaust: “The authors of such works espouse actuality, but that is not to say that they have replicated it” (22). Hilberg goes on to say, with regards to non-historical texts on the subject of Auschwitz and the other concentration camps:
These recreators of the Holocaust, be they historians, sculptors, architects, designers, novelists, playwrights, or poets, are molding something new. They may be shrewd, insightful, or masterful, but they take a larger risk, and all the more so, if they take poetic license to subtract something from the crude reality for the sake of a heightened effect. (22-23)
Hilberg seems hesitant about texts concerning the Holocaust. He does not go as far as Adorno does by saying that it is impossible to write about the subject, but he does point out that one should approach the subject with caution. Certainly, one should not claim that a work on the Holocaust is accurate in its representation of the events, as it is impossible to capture the horrors of the Holocaust. Raul Hilberg has stated, after publication of his work on the Holocaust, that
I had no anxieties about artistic failure. Now I have been told that I have indeed succeeded. And that is a cause of some worry, for we historians usurp history precisely when we are successful in our work, and that is to say that nowadays some people might read what I have written in the mistaken belief that here, on my printed pages, they will find the true ultimate Holocaust as it really happened. (25)
Hilberg pinpoints a problem with the verisimilitude or realism: readers without first hand experience will take what is realistic as reality. Hilberg quotes Elle Wiesel as saying that: “If it is a novel, it is not about Auschwitz, […] and if it is about Auschwitz, it is not a novel” (Hilberg 23).
There seems to be a consensus, then, that writing about the Holocaust is problematic, if not downright impossible. Yet, relatively shortly after the Second World War, several authors published novels about the war, which were wildly humorous. Amongst these authors were Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut, who rose to fame through their accounts of the war and whose war novels remain arguably their magna opera. Both of these authors became known for their humour and wit in connection to their subject matter. Moreover, both of these men served time in the combative forces. Joseph Heller served as a bombardier in the U.S. Air Force at the Italian front; Kurt Vonnegut served as a private in the U.S. Army, was captured during the Battle of Bruges and imprisoned in Dresden and while there witnessed the
firebombing. Unlike Hilberg, Vonnegut and Heller were there, and experienced war firsthand. They would have a far more intimate knowledge of the horrors of the Second World War than those of us who were taught about the Holocaust in high school. Moreover, they know the losses and sacrifices of war. Yet they chose to write about a terrible subject with humour. If writing about the Holocaust is problematic, then it seems an odd choice to represent its horrors through humour. Humour is a way of using poetic license to diminish the crude reality
for heightened effect, to borrow Hilberg’s phrase, and one that at first glance seems especially ill-fitted to the atrocities of World War II.
In “Education After Auschwitz”, Adorno relates an anecdote about a critic of Sartre’s Morts Sans Sépulchre, “a play which depicts the most terrifying things” (4). The play made the critic uneasy,
But he did not explain this discontent as being caused by the horror of the subject matter, which is the horror of our world. Instead he twisted it so that, in comparison with a position like that of Sartre, who engages himself with the horror, we could maintain—almost maintain, I should say—an appreciation of the higher things: so that we could not acknowledge the senselessness of the horror. To the point: by means of noble existential cant the critic wanted to avoid confronting the horror. (Adorno 1981: 4) Perhaps there is a similar motive behind the “humorous” war novels, such as Slaughterhouse-Five and Catch-22. Such authors may be attempting to maintain an
appreciation of higher things, while avoiding to confront the horror. Conversely, the humour may also be a ploy to underline the senselessness of war and its atrocities. This thesis will consider the novels by the aforementioned authors, namely Heller’s Catch-22 and
Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, and attempt to answer the question of why these works treat a horrible subject with such humour.
In chapter 1, I will discuss definitions and present the characteristics of black humour and absurd humour and briefly pinpoint how those characteristics are present in Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five.
In chapter 2, I will through close reading argue that Heller’s novel Catch-22 is in subject akin to war poetry, but in its form quite distinct. The novel is the first in a line of post-World War II novels which adopted humour as chief way of presenting the events of the war. Further, I will touch upon the roles of the absurd and black humour in this novel. In chapter 3, I will explore how Vonnegut experiments with form and the science fiction genre to create an absurd novel in response to the Second World War.
Finally, in chapter 4, I will draw together my arguments and sum up the role of humour in post-World War II literature and specifically in Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five, thereby concluding my thesis.
BLACKHUMOURANDTHEABSURD
The humour of Heller and Vonnegut is a particular form, that of the absurd, and in combination with their subject matter, it could be labelled as “dark humour”. Charles B. Harris writes that American absurdist novelists “[employ] traditional novelistic devices, but they employ them ironically, even farcically” in order to present the theme that “ours is an absurd universe, chaotic and without meaning” (7). In the novels that use this approach, “the vision of an absurd world not only constitutes the novel’s theme,” but is simultaneously reflected in form (ibid. 21).
Patrick O’Neill defines black humour as “that form of humour which, using cruelty, bitterness, and sometimes despair, underlines the absurdity of the world” (O’Neill 146). O’Neill lists five modes of articulation that together make up black humour: “the satiric, the ironic, the grotesque, the absurd and the parodic” (156). O’Neill does not attempt to define satire, irony, the absurd or parody. In fact, Harold Bloom in his introduction to Dark Humor writes: “Defining dark humor is virtually impossible because its manifestation in great literature necessarily involves irony, the trope in which you say one thing and mean another, sometimes the opposite of what is said” (xv). Irony is a concept that is often discussed, but never properly defined. O’Neill is forced to admit in his own essay that there is no
agreement on what black humour is, “since there is no agreement either as to what humour is” (145). In lieu of a proper definition, O’Neill attempts to identify the characteristics of black humour. He writes that the power of black humour depends on “the comic incongruity of blending the rationality of satire and the understatement of irony on the one hand with the irrationality and the exaggeration of the grotesque on the other” (ibid. 149-50). This blend is achieved by employing traditional novelistic devices, rather than creating a text that is wholly absurd, as done by for example Samuel Beckett.
The combination of traditional novelistic devices with what O’Neill calls irrationality and exaggeration, is according to Harris a characteristic of American absurd literature. Likewise, in Harris’s treatment of the aesthetics of absurdity he identifies what corresponds to O’Neill’s satiric, ironic, and parodic. Only, while O’Neill argues that black humour underlines absurdity, Harris views black humour as a part of absurdity. Thus, while black humour and absurdity are neither well-defined concepts, they seem to go hand in hand. Consequently, it is at times difficult to draw a distinction between what is black humour and
what is absurd humour, or identify when the two bleed into each other and a passage becomes a combination of both.1
Both Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five employ traditional novelistic devices, sometimes ironically, in combination with experimental techniques and irrational
exaggeration, to the effect that both novels are absurd not only in theme but in form also. However, this fusion of form and theme (as Harris calls it) is maintained differently for both novels. In Catch-22, the world is limited to the world of soldiers in wartime—the events of the novel predominantly take place within the base, and even when Rome is used as
backdrop, the characters are surrounded by military personnel. In Catch-22, then, the absurd world is an Air Force unit during wartime, but even the absurdity of that world is not
completely maintained. At times, Heller foregoes humour in favour of more traditional dramatic effect. In Slaughterhouse-Five, on the other hand, the war is but a part of the novel. Billy Pilgrim’s life before and after the war are also parts of the novel, and Vonnegut
extends the absurd across the world in its entirety. The absurdity is maintained throughout the novel. Not only the war is absurd, other aspects of Billy Pilgrim’s life are all treated as equally absurd. Vonnegut even creates another, fictional world inhabited by green plungers with a hand and eye on top, which is no more absurd than our own world.
The absence of meaning, however, is a key characteristic in both novels. Whereas war novels generally attach great value to the actions of soldiers—be it heroism, patriotism, or some other virtue—Heller and Vonnegut’s representation of soldiers involved in the war undercuts traditional virtues. Instead, the characters in Catch-22 especially, and to a lesser degree in Slaughterhouse-Five, are scared and incapable.
Both Yossarian and Billy Pilgrim are cartoonish figures placed in serious situations. The dichotomy between the characters and the subject matter is a comic element of both novels. Secondary characters in the novels are often flat. This way, “human beings remain as illusive and problematic as the absurd universe they occupy” (Harris 27). By creating characters that are unrealistic, the author has freedom to have them behave erratically, and place them in unrealistic situations. Furthermore, there is a detachment between the character and the reader, which the author can exploit for comic effect. As Harris writes: “[We] can only laugh when a cartoon coyote is tricked into falling down a canyon by a cartoon roadrunner. […] Our disengagement, in fact, explains much of the so-called black
1 Given the fact that terms such as humour and irony are ill-defined at best, I will use the words “humorous” and “comic” to denote any passage that is written in such a way as to attempt to make the reader laugh. I will attempt to differentiate between the absurd and black humour, where absurd refers to humour which underlines the chaotic nature, irrationality, and absence of meaning in our universe, while black humour refers to that humour which draws on death and despair, cruelty, or violence.
humour of these novels. Often we find ourselves laughing at the various cruel and violent events that fill their pages” (ibid 28). This strategy is used to maximum effect by Heller, as over the course of the novel many of the secondary characters die in horrifically violent ways, which are described in gruesome detail, yet remain comic.
Novels written between the First and Second World Wars, such as those of Ernest Hemingway, may present a world that is absurd, but are based on rationality alone, lacking the grotesque elements. There is more grandeur in Hemingway’s rhetoric as it lacks the tongue-in-cheek that Heller and Vonnegut do keep. In fact, Hemingway’s rhetoric is close to that of newspapers during wartime: “Though Hemingway’s use of form does help define his absurdist vision, the form is not itself absurd. The incidents are credible, not fantastic, and the description is realistic” (Harris 21). Some of Hemingway’s novels may be the same in subject matter to those of Heller and Vonnegut, and their visions may even be similar, Hemingway’s treatment of his subject is very different: “Even if his theme is the incongruity of an absurd universe […] his treatment of this theme involves a coherent structure” (ibid. 25). While Heller and Vonnegut use traditional literary devices often in an ironic manner, Hemingway still relies on them to create a coherent novel. With their particular brand of humour, Heller and Vonnegut were part of a new, distinct literary style that blossomed after the Second World War. A style that fit with the sentiments of the era, that could relate the concerns and anxieties predominant after World War II.
CATCH-22
Joseph Heller’s debut novel Catch-22, based on his experiences as a bomber at the Italian front of the Second World War, received mixed reviews upon its publication in 1961. Although some reviews heralded the novel as a great work of literature, on the other end were “more than a few that were rigid with moral outrage” (Aldridge 3). One of the most positive reviews came from Robert Brustein, in the New Republic, who wrote that “the escape route of laughter [is] the only recourse from a malignant world” (quoted in Aldridge 3). Brustein called the novel “one of the most bitterly funny works in the language,” but added that it is “as formless as any picaresque epic” (quoted in Harris 33). As such, it seems that the reception of the novel was divided between those who subscribed to Brustein’s opinion and understood and enjoyed the humour, and those who did not appreciate Heller’s jokes. Orville Prescott, who praised the novel for its humour, felt compelled to add that it is not “a good novel by conventional standards” (ibid. 33). Over the years, audiences learned to appreciate the type of absurd novels that includes Catch-22, and as its style became more palatable for a large audience, the novel turned into a huge bestseller. Even its title has entered the English language as a phrase denoting the flawed logic Heller employs in his novel for comic effect, and the novel has been included in several lists of greatest English novels. Aldridge poses that:
In fact, many readers must have sensed that beneath the comic surfaces Mr. Heller was saying something outrageous, unforgivably outrageous, not just about the idiocy of war but about our whole way of life and the system of false values on which it is based. (3)
According to Aldridge, the audience relates to Heller’s opinions hidden underneath the comic and this is what gave the book “such pertinence to readers who discovered it over the next decade” (3). The role of humour in Catch-22, in the view of Aldridge, is to mask outrageous opinions. By having a comic surface, the impact of the negative comments on society is softened. However, Heller does not maintain a comic surface throughout the novel. Where the absurd is absent, the novel contains moments of tragedy and takes on a serious tone. In these moments, the novel clearly articulates negative comments upon society—Heller’s outrageous opinions, in Aldridge’s words.
Though audiences eventually learned to appreciate Catch-22, the novel was a radical departure from the norm. As Harris explains: “Catch-22 may be seen as the first American
novel of the absurd to appear in the sixties. Its technical innovations distinguish it from the novels that precede it and link it with the absurdist novels which follow it” (ibid 37-38). Heller was the first of a group of authors who employed a new style of absurd literature as outlined in the previous chapter. Absurd literature in response to the Second World War was very different from previous literature about war. Catch-22 constantly undermines and satirises pro-war rhetoric and shows the horrible impact war has on those participating in it. Thus the novel can be contrasted with novels such as Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, with its protagonist Robert Jordan as heroic figure, and compared to such war poetry as Wilfred Owen’s Dolce et Decorum Est, and its message that dying for one’s country may not be heroic at all. This chapter will show through close reading of several scenes how Catch-22 undermines pro-war rhetoric using humour, and argue that this style of approaching war in fiction developed in response to the Second World War.
The soldiers in Catch-22 are flawed anti-heroes, and most, if not all, of them are traumatised by their experiences in the war. The novel shows not a band of brothers, nor a group of heroic young men fighting for freedom, but a dysfunctional riffraff of unwilling and incapable individuals. The men stationed on the island Pianosa, near Italy, have either no business being there or desperately do not want to be there. The narrative shows that the men have no motivation to fight in the war and all they wish is to return stateside in safety:
But there was no enthusiasm in Yossarian’s group. In Yossarian’s group there was only a mounting number of enlisted men and officers who found their way solemnly to Sergeant Towser several times a day to ask if the orders sending them home had come in. […] They worried and bit their nails. They were grotesque, like useless young men in a depression. They moved sideways, like crabs. They were waiting for the order sending them home to safety to return from Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters in Italy, and while they waited they had nothing better to do but worry and bite their nails and find their way solemnly to Sergeant Towser several times a day to ask if the orders sending them home to safety had come. (Heller 30-31)
The single concern that occupies the minds of the men is when they will be allowed to go home, away from the danger. They are not concerned with the outcome of the war. They are not overcome by patriotism or a sense of duty. They are overwhelmed by a dreadful outlook
and the slim possibility of escape. The characteristic repetition of the novel emphasises the repetitive nature of the men’s actions, who have nothing better to do but ask the same question over and over again, to no avail. Simultaneously, this shows how little power these men had, how little freedom. The phrase which describes the men is particularly striking: “They were grotesque, like useless young men in a depression” (ibid. 30).
Heller’s rhetoric is different from the typical war rhetoric which heralds soldiers, especially those who died in battle. These men are useless, rather than instrumental for the country’s freedom, grotesque rather than heroic. The subsequent phrase is slightly more humorous in its absurdity, but at the same time shows the grotesque: “They moved sideways, like crabs” (ibid. 30). The comparison to crabs scurrying away from danger, their bellies pressed against the ground, dehumanizes the men. They are subject to their primal instinct to flee from harm. Of course, in the realm of Catch-22, it is possible that the men are so
distraught by their fears that they are literally moving sideways, just as Yossarian towards the end of the novel moves “backward because he was continuously spinning around as he walked to make sure no one was sneaking up on him from behind. Every sound to his rear was a warning, every person he passed a potential assassin” (ibid. 450). Again, this image is funny in its absurdity, and this is undoubtedly by Heller’s design, but the message behind it remains distressing. The narrative shows a young man who has gone insane by fear from the war. Yossarian has become so paranoid that he can no longer function as a human being. Just as the other men in his group are “like useless young men in a depression”, Yossarian is useless and paranoid (ibid. 30). This highlights the severe consequences war has on the mind. An entire generation of young men was affected by the war and in more or lesser degree traumatised. Diederik Oostdijk writes:
Allied air crew lived a bizarre lifestyle […] they had to fly their dangerous missions, being shot at by enemy planes, flak, and occasionally by friendly fire. While the majority of the surviving air crews was able to cope with the mental pressures, a sizable minority was not, and snapped. (268)
Catch-22 shows this bizarre lifestyle and how some men snapped as a result. Furthermore, the novel shows that while some men are able to cope, this does not mean they are unaffected. Rather, the narrative shows how men struggle to cope with their experiences in the war. One could argue that Yossarian copes, since he does not snap and go insane, like Dobbs, who has a
panic attack whilst flying a mission, or Hungry Joe, who has screaming nightmares each night.
That does not mean, however, that Yossarian is free from trauma. When new
replacements arrive and set up in Yossarian’s tent, the text shows the extent to which war has changed Yossarian:
He could not make them understand that he was a crotchety old fogey of twenty-eight, that he belonged to another generation, another era, another world, that having a good time bored him and was not worth the effort, and that they bored him, too. He could not make them shut up; they were worse than women. They had not the brains enough to be introverted and repressed. (Heller 400)
The replacements are in fact twenty-one years old, only a few years younger than Yossarian. However they are yet to see combat, and are still innocent and unaffected by the war. They are, in fact, as you would expect twenty-one year old men to be. Yossarian has already lost friends in combat and lived through dire situations. As a result, he feels disconnected from the young men, because they do not share his experiences. They cannot relate to his life. The other world Yossarian mentions he belongs to, is the world of the combat veteran, which is different from the world that has not fought the war. Yossarian is depressed because of his trauma. Having a good time bores him because he cannot have a good time anymore—he is constantly depressed. The exchange between the young men and Yossarian shows how living throw the war affects the character of young men. As the young replacements experience combat and lose their comrades, they will be affected and become more like Yossarian: “useless young men in a depression” (ibid. 30).
The narrative of Catch-22 resists the notion that the Second World War was “the good war”, as it came to be known. Michael C.C. Adams, in his book The Best War Ever: America and World War II, writes that the Second World War
has been converted over time from a complex, problematic event, full of nuance and debatable meaning, to a simple and shining legend of the Good War. For many, including a majority of the survivors from the era, the war years have become America’s golden age, a peak in the life of society
when everything worked out and the good guys definitely got a happy ending. It was a great war. For Americans, it was the best war ever. (2)
Catch-22 emphasises that for those actively involved in fighting the war, it was far from unproblematic. Many good guys did not see a happy ending, and even those who did survive the war were left to cope with their traumas. Much like Yossarian in the novel, veterans would feel disconnected upon their return, unable to relate to those who had not experienced what they had. Furthermore, like Yossarian, some of them would have to deal severe
depressions. Willard Waller, a First World War veteran, writes: “The flyer who returns to his home and is lionized for heroic exploits may still torture himself with the feeling of
unworthiness and guilt” (54). American poet Howard Nemerov, like Heller a pilot during World War II, in his work “warns against the perennial temptation of war and how quickly people forget the horror of previous wars” (Oostdijk 266). In The War in the Air, Nemerov writes:
That was the good war, the war we won As if there was no death, for goodness’s sake. With the help of those we left out there In the air, the empty air. (13-16)
Oostdijk writes: “Nemerov clearly despises the phrase ‘good war’. His atypically direct exclamation ‘for goodness’s sake’ is indicative of how much this prevalent misconception of the war offends him” (275). Nemerov was frustrated that the sacrifices made during the war were so quickly forgotten and that the public viewed the war as a victory without
remembering those who had helped win it and gave their lives in the process. In poetry, work which dealt with the horrors and subsequent traumas of war was more common than in fiction. Although war novels are nothing new, of course, Heller’s perspective is more in line with war poets than with novelists. That is to say, the perspective Heller takes is more anti-war. Like Nemerov’s poetry, Heller’s fiction presents the horrors of war, rather than
glorifying it. However, as a novelist, Heller describes the war in a different way than a poet does. Heller’s narrative lacks the anger and frustration of Nemerov’s poetry.
Heller shows how horrible war was to those involved and how their lives were
influenced by fear. Over the course of Catch-22, fear takes over Yossarian’s live and impairs him in his actions. When Yossarian goes up with the bombers to fly his missions, he
longed to sit on the floor in a huddled ball right on top of the escape hatch inside a sheltering igloo of extra flak suits that he would have been happy to carry along with him, his parachute already hooked to his harness where it belonged, one fist clenching the red-handled rip cord, one fist gripping the emergency hatch release that would spill him earthward into the air at the first dreadful squeal of destruction. That was where he wanted to be if he had to be there at all, instead of hung out there in front like some goddam cantilevered goldfish in some goddam cantilevered goldfish bowl while the goddam foul black tiers of flak were bursting and booming and billowing all around and above and below him in a climbing, cracking, staggered, banging, phantasmagorical, cosmological wickedness that jarred and tossed and shivered, clattered and pierced, and threatened to annihilate them all in one splinter of a second in one vast flash of fire. (Heller 55)
The image of Yossarian sitting on top of the emergency exit with his hands on the release in a self-build igloo of flak suits is ridiculous and comic. In comparison, war poetry takes on a much more serious tone and uses grave descriptions. For example, Randall Jarrell’s The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner describes a man’s death on a bomber plane during World War II: “I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. / When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.” (4-5). Poetry is of course more sparse, and Heller exploits the extra space fiction offers him to write a much more extensive description of the flak, although Jarrell and Heller describe essentially the same image. Jarrell uses a single word, “nightmare” to evoke the fear the speaker of the poem feels for the flak and the fighters, while Yossarian’s response to his fear is wanting to sit on an escape hatch guarded by flak suits. Furthermore, Yossarian cusses out his position and the flak. Jarrell’s final line is an upsetting image of the bloody remains of a man being washed away. Such imagery is also used in Catch-22, but always as a source of comedy, like the death of Kid Sampson, whose legs stay on the beach after they are severed from his torso accidentally by McWatt flying his plane too low.
However, despite its humorous tone, the passage also shows how deeply frightened Yossarian is. If he has to be on the plane—as is his duty to be—the only way he wants to be there is in a position where he can get out as fast as possible. He would rather disobey his orders and not enter the plane at all, which he does at a later moment in the novel. Heller uses
another striking simile to describe the men and their plane. The men are likened to goldfish, a rather unintelligent animal known chiefly for doing the same thing over and over and not remembering anything. The comparison is apt, as the men fly the same missions over and over and, in Yossarian’s eyes, seem not to remember how dangerous these were. Yossarian does remember the danger, though, and is unwilling to swim the same circle once more. The second part of the quote emphasises the danger Yossarian fears. Heller uses a combination of polysyndeton (a rhetorical figure often used by Hemingway) and asyndeton to craft a run-on sentence that encompasses Yossarian’s fears2. Describing the flak as “bursting and booming
and billowing all around and above and below him” creates a sense of urgency, an increased feeling of chaos and danger (ibid. 55 emphasis added). Heller attempts to make the reader feel some of Yossarian’s fear. Paradoxically, fear is the only thing that keeps Yossarian from fleeing:
the only thing that stopped him from abandoning his post under fire and scurrying back through the crawlway like a yellow-bellied rat was his unwillingness to entrust the evasive action out of the target area to anybody else. There was nobody else in the world he would honor with so great a responsibility. There was nobody else he knew who was as big a coward. (Heller 56)
Yossarian is motivated to fulfil his tasks by fear, rather than duty or patriotism. He is certainly not brave in his job. It is simply that doing his job may keep him alive and he is too afraid for his life to entrust anyone else with keeping him save. Again, Heller undercuts the expected war rhetoric. Yossarian is not courageous, as soldiers are most often described; he does not trust his comrades, his brothers-in-arms, where it is usually emphasised that soldiers are willing to die for another. Even though some of the men are Yossarian’s friends, such as Dunbar with whom Yossarian is particularly close, he does not trust them with his life. Quite the contrary, in fact, he is convinced they will get him killed. None of the pilots fly safely enough to put Yossarian’s mind at ease. To survive in battle, the novel holds, you need fear:
2 Polysendeton is the rhetorical figure whereby the writer uses many conjunctions, where they could be omitted or replaced by a comma: the flak was bursting and booming and billowing below and above etc.
Asyndeton is the rhetorical figure whereby the author does omit conjunctions in favour of comma’s: climbing, cracking, staggered, banging, phantasmagorical etc.
All you needed was fear, and Yossarian had plenty of that, more fear than Orr or Hungry Joe, more fear 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 the instant his bombs were away. (Heller 56)
Fear is essential to survival. Yossarian has more fear than the other men in his unit, not because the other men are more courageous, but because the other men have resigned
themselves to their deaths. They are not without fear, but have simply accepted that their fears are reasonable and that they will die in the war. Only Yossarian refuses to accept his death, although he does expect it.
Catch-22 opposes the idea that giving one’s life for one’s country is an honourable death. There are no heroes in the novel. Who survives and who perishes in battle is simply a matter of chance. Those who die are not martyrs, they are simply unlucky. Those who live are not courageous, they are fortunate. Yossarian wants nothing more than to be among the fortunate and live to go home.
History did not demand Yossarian’s premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; which men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.
(Heller 77)
Heller devalues what is often referred to as the ultimate sacrifice: to give ones life for his country. As such, he addresses the same issue as Wilfred Owen in Dulce et Decorum est: “The old lie; Dulce et Decorum est / Pro patria mori.” Owen, in his poem, describes a horrible scene of a soldier dying in a gas attack, who is “guttering, choking, drowning”, “the blood / Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs”. He then questions how such a horrible and cruel way of dying can be honourable. Heller, on the other hand, questions the point in dying altogether. Firstly, in Catch-22 death is not described as a sacrifice, but as falling victim to circumstance, thus dying becomes an involuntary action, rather than a deliberate action, as
suggested when it is described as making a sacrifice. The emphasis is shifted from the soldier to the conditions around him. Secondly, the importance of a soldier’s death is depreciated. Casualties are considered a necessity, an unavoidable consequence of combat. The outcome of the war is not dependent on Yossarian losing his life—or any other individual’s life for that matter. The men are interchangeable, and which of them loses their life is irrelevant to the course of the war. The last sentence of the quote is what Aldridge would call Heller’s outrageous opinion, although here Heller does not attempt to hide behind a veil of humour. His opinion is clearly spelled out on the page: Heller denies the importance of the war, the so-called greater good. In this case, the end does not justify the means, because the end itself is void. The war does no good to anyone. The sole benefit—the only upside—for a soldier is that he receives pay. However, even that is no good unless you survive the war. The other upside of war, that it liberates children from the influence of their parents, is more difficult to understand. How does war liberate children from their parents? One possibility is that many parents are killed in the war, leaving the children orphaned. However, since during the Second World War all soldiers would have been male, it would be mostly fathers that were killed. Another possibility is that children refers to the soldiers, drafted and stationed in a distant, foreign country well away from their parents. Not only are the soldiers children in the sense that everyone remains forever a child of their parents, but even in age. The soldiers were often only teenagers, too young to legally drink, in some cases even too young to vote. These young men were forced into the adult world that is war, into a position of responsibility. In this reading, the sentence becomes highly sarcastic. Children are pulled away from their parents influence to be influenced by war, to be educated by their superior officers. As Randall Jarrell writes in The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner: “From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State”. Lorrie Goldensohn writes about the subject of Randall Jarrell’s poem: “Blind and helpless, part child-warrior, part neglected pet, he is the whelp of a cowed nature colonized by totalitarian politics” (190). This image, which Goldensohn calls that of the “airman-fetus” reduces the soldier “to a child’s helplessness” (180-181). Jarrell’s poem like the narrative of Catch-22 stresses how young and immature the soldiers were whilst actively engaged in battle.
The lack of importance of the war is reflected in the interests of Yossarian’s superiors. Generals Peckem and Dreedle are far too preoccupied with their own personal conflict to worry about the war. General Peckem has declared war on Dreedle, briefing his staff that “Dreedle is on our side, and Dreedle is the enemy” (Heller 370). Peckem tries to outdo the other General in meaningless displays of authority, by having a bigger staff; a less effective,
but more aesthetically pleasing bomb pattern; or visiting more troops, whilst taking no actions whatsoever to end the war. Meanwhile, General Dreedle has a continuous conflict with his son-in-law, whom he torments by preventing his son-in-law from getting laid and having Chief White Halfoat punch him in the nose. Similarly, Lieutenant Scheisskopf, to be
promoted all the way up to General Scheisskopf, is obsessed with parades, and insists his men take part in them every Sunday. All the men hate parades, find them cumbersome and useless, but “Scheisskopf longed desperately to win parades and sat up half the night working on it”, ignoring his wife who desperately wants to have sex (ibid. 82). When Scheisskopf is
promoted to General, he calls the staff and tells them: “he wants us to march. He wants everybody to march!” (ibid. 449). Even as General of the entire Air Force, Scheisskopf is obsessed with parades and, much like his predecessors Peckem and Dreedle, ignores the war in lieu of his own agenda.
Milo Minderbinder only has an interest in the war in the economical sense of the world. Through his syndicate, he profits immensely from the war. Milo unscrupulously deals with all parties involved to expand his business. He brings his produce to American bases using German bombers, arguing that the planes are part of the syndicate and thus private property of American citizens:
And sure enough, Milo was right, for when they looked, his mechanics had painted out the German swastikas on the wings, tails and fuselages with double coats of flat white and stencilled in the words M & M
ENTERPRISES, FINE FRUITS AND PRODUCE. Right before their eyes he had
transformed his syndicate into an international cartel. (Heller 291)
The interests of the syndicate are greater than the conflict between nations. Milo’s business is not hampered by the politics of war; all sides are equally invested in his syndicate and he trades with all countries alike. In fact, Milo’s business flourishes because of the politics of war, as he plays both sides against each other: “Milo contracted with the American military authorities to bomb the German-held highway bridge at Orvieto and with the German military authorities to defend the highway bridge at Orvieto with antiaircraft fire against his own attack” (ibid. 292). Both the Americans and the Germans had men and equipment for military action and were willing to employ their own resources, thus Milo “realized a fantastic profit […] for doing nothing more than signing his name twice (ibid. 293). Milo sees this as a great victory for not just him, but for all international businesses, as he sets an example of how to
successfully deal with military institutions. Yossarian disagrees with Milo, as there is a dead man in his tent who was shot down by the Germans because Milo alerted the Germans when the American bombers came. Yossarian blames Milo for killing the man in his tent. Milo defends himself saying that he was not on the ground shooting at the planes and therefore did not kill the man. He refuses to acknowledge any responsibility on his part for what happened:
The Germans have the bridge, and we were going to bomb it, whether I stepped into the picture or not. I just saw a wonderful opportunity to make some profit out of the mission, and I took it. What’s so terrible about that? (Heller 293)
Milo capitalises on the missions of his own military without playing an active part in those missions. This way, he maintains, he is free from blame for the actions themselves—all he does is make a profit from them, and he sees nothing wrong with making a profit. Milo is capitalism personified: “Look, I didn’t start this war […] I’m just trying to put it on a
businesslike basis. Is anything wrong with that?” (ibid. 293-94). In Milo’s eyes, there are no good and evil parties involved in the war, all armies are potential business partners. When Yossarian scolds Milo for “dealing with the enemy”, Milo responds:
the Germans are not our enemies […] Sure, we’re at war with them. But the Germans are also members in good standing of the syndicate, and it’s my job to protect their rights as shareholders. Maybe they did start the war, and maybe they are killing millions of people, but they pay their bills a lot more promptly than some allies of ours I could name. (Heller 294)
In the end, the fact that the Germans pay their bills promptly and bring Milo profit outweighs the fact that they started a genocide. War does not stop business. If anything, it creates business opportunities. When Milo’s syndicate is almost bankrupt due to a bad deal he made on cotton, it is a contract he makes with the Germans to bomb his own outfit that saves M&M Enterprises. “Wounded soon lay screaming everywhere. A cluster of fragmentation bombs exploded in the yard of the officers’ club and punched jagged holes in the side of the wooden building and in the bellies and backs of a row of lieutenants and captains standing at the bar” (ibid. 296). Milo is vilified for bombing his own comrades and voices are raised to punish him, until Milo reveals how much profit he made. The profit is deemed greater than the cost
of damages in property and wounded men. “In the wake of absurdity, traditional values are swept under. Profit, ‘efficiency,’ even good public relations, take precedence over humane considerations” (Harris 41). Milo is absolved from blame and free to continue running his syndicate. Thus the public opinion underlines Milo’s philosophy that money is more
important than war. This shows that for the public it is easy to forget or ignore the horrors and deaths of war and focus on what is deemed its positive aspects. Milo is a personification of the system and his attitude towards war and especially his comrades shows what is wrong with that system. Milo is more committed to executing the attack on his own outfit properly than he is to the war, which shows how priorities are shifted in a wrong way. Heller makes his point using a great deal of irony, which has since become a widespread attitude, but is
characteristic for post-World War II humour.
Yossarian’s own sentiments echo the unimportance of the war. During a bombing Havermeyer refuses to take evasive actions, which “gave the German gunners below all the time they needed to set their sights and take their aim and pull their triggers or lanyards or switches or whatever the hell they did pull when they wanted to kill people they didn’t know” (Heller 33). Both the action and the result of the mission are mocked. Germans and
Americans alike are attempting to kill people they do not know. Moreover, they are trying to kill people they cannot even see. The phrasing not only undermines the heroism of their actions, but also questions the purpose. They are not killing the enemy, they are shooting at unknown targets. Furthermore, the way they kill people is by simply pulling a trigger. There is nothing heroic or even difficult in their actions, it is as easy as pushing a button. Yossarian, on his part, “no longer gave a damn whether he missed or not” (33). He does not see any purpose to his missions. He does not believe his actions will end the war. Much like the aforementioned Generals, Yossarian is uninterested in participating in the war. He pulls his trigger when he has to, but with no regard for the result. He is too preoccupied with other interests to care for fighting the war.
Not only the importance of war, but also the significance of death is undermined in Catch-22. To Yossarian’s great upset, there is a dead man in his tent, but nobody else will acknowledge there is a problem.
Almost without realizing it, Sergeant Towser had fallen into the habit of thinking of the dead man in Yossarian’s tent in Yossarian’s terms – as a dead man in Yossarian’s tent. In reality, he was no such thing. He was simply a replacement pilot who had been killed in combat before he had
officially reported for duty. […] No one could recall who he was or what he looked like, least of all Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren, who remembered only that a new officer had shown up at the operations tent just in time to be killed… (Heller 124)
Since the dead man had not reported for duty, officially he had not arrived and therefore could not possibly have been shot. Consequently, the officers ignore him. Even Yossarian refers to him as the dead man in his tent, rather than by his name. In his death, the man has become an anonymous nuisance. No trouble is taken to bury him or notify his next of kin about his untimely demise. The treatment this pilot receives after his death highlights how
interchangeable people are in war. The man has died before he could introduce himself properly and now he is hardly remembered by those responsible for him. He was simply a replacement to begin with, and now that he has died a new replacement will come and take his spot. The only men who might have remembered him “had all been blown to bits with him” (ibid. 124). These men are easily ignored, though, since they have been blown to bits. It is only Yossarian who causes trouble, complaining about the dead man in his tent and
reminding the officers of him. Yossarian thinks of the dead man in his tent as follows: “Mudd was the unknown soldier who had never had a chance, for that was the only thing anyone ever did know about all the unknown soldiers – they never had a chance. They had to be dead” (ibid. 125). However, the unknown soldiers receive little sympathy. Yossarian complains about Mudd because his belongings are still in Yossarian’s tent and he feels that they fill the tent with death. Yossarian is scared enough as it is and needs no further reminders of death’s presence.
Another image of death wanders the camp in the guise of Doc Daneeka. Doc Daneeka should have crashed with McWatt, except he was not on the plane, although paperwork shows he was. Consequently, as far as the staff is concerned, Doc Daneeka was on board and
perished with McWatt. When Doc Daneeka comes into the hospital to have his temperature taken by his assistants, they inform him “you’re dead sir […] That’s probably the reason why you always feel so cold” (Heller 392). The War Department informs Daneeka’s wife that he is dead, and for all intents and purposes he is.
He found himself ostracized in the squadron […] He drew no pay or PX rations and depended for life on the charity of Sergeant Towser and Milo, who both knew he was dead. Colonel Cathcart refused to see him, and
Colonel Korn sent word through Major Danby that he would have Doc Daneeka cremated on the spot if he ever showed up at Group Headquarters. (ibid. 394-95)
Doc Daneeka is treated by all around him as if he were dead and they ignore his presence as it annoys them. Daneeka should be dead and dead man do not walk around base. Eventually even Doc Daneeka realises he is dead and writes a letter to his wife pleading her to convince everyone he is alive, but she ignores his letter and moves away. Even though Doc Daneeka is not technically dead, he is quickly forgotten by both his comrades overseas as well as his family back home. That is the fate of those who die in battle: they are not heralded or awarded posthumously, but ignored and forgotten by their friends and family, who move on with their lives without them.
Finally, there is the soldier in white, whom is introduced in the beginning of the novel when Yossarian is in the hospital. The soldier in white is pronounced dead by Nurse Cramer, and his death recurs several times in the novel, but later in the novel he suddenly reappears in the hospital. “The soldier in white appears three times, in chapters 1, 17, and 34”, and with each appearance the description of his death becomes more unnerving, until the final time where “there are no comic touches whatsoever. Convinced that there's no one inside, Dunbar creates such a disturbance he is disappeared by the hospital authorities. Indeed, Dunbar will never be seen again” (Merrill 140). His reappearance “seems proof of the Army’s power to dole out death arbitrarily, then change its mind” (Harris 35). Just as Doc Daneeka is deemed dead by the Army, even though he is not, the soldier in white is pronounced dead when he is, but later re-evaluated as being still alive when he is not. Yossarian “cannot be certain that [the soldier in white’s] death is not the responsibility of some official act, like Nurse Cramer’s, […] or a bureaucratic ‘death’ like that of Doc Daneeka” (Mellard 35). These deaths are not the result of combat, but “are a matter of policy” determined by the staff of officers (Harris 35). Thus death becomes a matter of bureaucracy and paperwork, and any emotional response is negated.
However, not every death is treated comically. The narrative does not maintain its absurdity throughout the novel. The death of Snowden in particular is different from the other deaths. Although “Snowden is introduced on the same comic note which sounds throughout the early chapters…Thereafter, as Richter remarks, the death of Snowden is repeatedly invoked with greater and greater portentousness” (Merrill 141). Until at the final repetition, “We can only be shocked and appalled at the death of Snowden” (Harris 28). The death of
Snowden is a moment when the novel cannot maintain its absurdity. Instead, it is perhaps the only moment of traditional dramatic tragedy in the novel. In dealing with such a traumatic subject, the novel cannot be constantly absurd, it needs a moment of genuine concern. The death of Snowden offers that moment in which the reader can truly identify with the narrative and experience catharsis. Tension is built towards the moment, as fragments of Snowden’s death are scattered throughout the novel. The phrase “I’m cold” as uttered by Snowden when he lays dying is repeated many times before the complete scene is finally presented. “The death of Snowden is rendered […] first as the subject of casual comments (where it is not even clear that Snowden has died), then as the occasion for brief, inconclusive scenes, finally as the novel's most powerfully dramatized episode” (Merrill 139). This odd, fragmented built up has two effects. Firstly, the reader becomes curious as to what has happened, so that when the scene is finally presented it is highly climactic. Secondly, Yossarian’s frequent flashbacks to Snowden not only enforce the gravity of the event, but also highlights how severely it has affected Yossarian. Merrill argues that through cumulative effect the scene “therefore seems to sum up what the novel is about”, namely Snowden’s secret: “man was matter” (ibid. 142). Other critics have also argued that the scene with Snowden is the most important moment in the novel, and that is because it is the moment in which humour is absent and the narrative pulls in the reader. That man is mere matter is in line with the absence of meaning propagated in Catch-22. Although it could be argued that Snowden’s death—like that of Mudd and so many others—is presented as insignificant, the reason for its insignificance is striking. Snowden is not an unfortunate casualty, or a necessary consequence of war. Snowden, like all men, is garbage. However, at this point in the novel there is no absurd or black humour; Yossarian’s epiphany is a depressing, nihilistic realisation.
In how Heller presents death in the novel we can see a clear difference between Catch-22 and war poetry. Although the essential idea is the same, to show how horrible death is and to oppose the idea that it is honourable to die, the treatment of death in the novel is unlike that of the war poets. Lorrie Goldensohn writes: “in the unheroic economy of the war-resistant, soldier death is horrifying waste and a reimmersion in the blood mesh of violence that the armed state perpetuates” (182). Horrifying waste is an accurate way of describing the sentiment of the war poets and Heller. However, unlike in war poetry, Catch-22 expresses this sentiment through humour. Characters such as Mudd and Doc Daneeka question the purpose of death, while Snowden in particular shows how horrifying death is.
Catch-22 also questions what the purpose is of fighting a war and what it means to win. When Yossarian and his comrades visit a brothel in Rome, they meet an old Italian man
who angers Nately by claiming that “Italy will win [the war]” (Heller 278). The nameless character is a parody of the wise, old man that serves as a mentor figure or moral guide to the protagonist—a common trope in fantasy literature.3 Nately points out that the American
soldier is “second to none”, to which the old man replies: “And the Italian fighting man is probably second to all. And that’s exactly why my country is doing so well in this war while your country is doing so poorly” (ibid. 278). At first it seems the old man reasons with the flawed logic that prevails throughout Catch-22. However, over the course of their discussion, it becomes clear that the old man has developed a solid argument.
‘But Italy was occupied by the Germans and is now occupied by us. You don’t call that doing very well, do you?’
‘But of course I do,’ exclaimed the old man cheerfully. ‘The Germans are being driven out, and we are still here. In a few years you will be gone too, and we will still be here. You see, Italy is really a very poor and weak country and that’s what makes us so strong. Italian soldiers are not dying anymore. But American and German soldiers are. I call that doing extremely well. yes, I am quite certain that Italy will survive this war and still be in existence long after your own country has been destroyed.’ (Heller 278)
To the old man winning means something entirely different than it does to Nately. Italy, as a nation, wins if it survives the war. America, on the other hand, is fighting on foreign soil. American soldiers are dying on Italian fields. Should they win the war and push back
Germany, they will return to America. Although victorious, they gain nothing from it—except maybe honour. The old man sees it as a victory to simply remain after all others have left. That way Italians keep both their lives and their lands. To him war is about survival, not about honour. The old man’s reasoning shows that in the long run war does not change anything. The whole issues of win or lose is rendered moot. Before the war, the land belonged to the Italians and after the war it will do so again. Men will have lost their lives, but for what? They will be eventually forgotten by the survivors, who will carry on with their lives as they did before the war. War is an assertion of politics. The old man explains to Nately:
‘I was a fascist when Mussolini was on top, and I am an anti-fascist now that he has been disposed. I was fanatically pro-German when the Germans were here to protect us against the Americans, and now that the Americans are here to protect us against the Germans I am fanatically pro-American. I can assure you, my outraged young friend’ –the old man’s knowing, disdainful eyes shone even more effervescently as Nately’s stuttering dismay increased – ‘that you and your country will have a no more loyal partisan in Italy than me – but only as long as you remain in Italy.’ (Heller 281)
With each new army that marches into Italy comes a new ideology, a new political view. The old men adopts them all, knowing full well it makes little difference. When Nately accuses him of being a “turn-coat” and “opportunist”, the old man simply reminds him that “I am a hundred and seven years old”; he has lived through war before, he has seen political ideology rise up and fall, and he no longer cares for any of them (281-82). The Germans protect against the Americans, the Americans against the Germans. Both nations use the same political rhetoric to justify their presence. To the Italian in the street, however, the difference is insignificant: the soldiers speak a different language and wear different colours. Again, there is no hero. There is no oppressor and no liberator. To a neutral, third-party observer, the American and German soldiers are essentially engaged in the same endeavour—or so the old man suggests. Such an opinion would encounter outrage even today, let alone shortly after the Second World War. Soldiers fight for their country and are identified by their nationality. An American veteran of the Second World War is seen as a hero, whereas a German veteran of the same war is looked down upon. Nately is proud of his country, “the most prosperous nation on earth”, and finds honour in fighting for America (ibid. 278). The old man, on the other hand, finds it ridiculous to risk one’s life for “something so absurd as a country” (ibid. 283).
‘There is nothing absurd about risking your life for your country!’ [Nately] declared. ‘Isn’t there?’ asked the old man. ‘What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishman 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.’
‘Anything worth living for,’ said Nately, ‘is worth dying for.’
‘And anything worth dying for,’ answered the sacrilegious old man, ‘is certainly worth living for.’
(Heller 283)
The old man cynically redefines a country in a way that defies patriotism and undermines Nately’s motivation to fight in the war. A country, in the old man’s eyes, is imaginary and therefore nothing worth dying over. Furthermore, the old man again implies that different nations all make use of the same rhetoric. Every soldier involved in the war is fighting for their country, whichever country it is they happen to have been born in. Not all countries can be worth dying for, yet men are dying for every country involved in the war. People place too much stock on their nation. Nately, as proud and positive he is of America, is a prime
example of this. Nately would die for his country and find honour in death. The old man points out that if America is so great, Nately would be better off living in it than dying for it.
One by one, the old man refutes common arguments made in pro-war rhetoric, which Nately appears to rehash with conviction. He argues that the war is pointless, that there is no winning or losing, and that there is no right or wrong side. The political relativism in his speech is poignant. The different armies on Italian soil each come with their own political agenda, but all sides use similar rhetoric to justify their cause. To the old man—and ostensibly to the Italian in the street—there is little difference. The soldiers of America and Germany are equated to one another. The unforgivably outrageous opinions Aldridge refers to in his article are not hidden by a comic surface, but clearly articulated by the old man. The old man’s speech devalues the actions of the American army and the sacrifices of its soldiers, while at the same time refusing to condemn the German soldiers. Interestingly, Nately’s encounter with the old man lacks the comic overtones that dominate the majority of the novel. There is some humour in the exchange between Nately and the old man, especially in their reactions to each other, but the old man himself is not at all a comic character. Although he articulates the most outrageous opinions, the old man’s speech lacks the absurd rhetoric of other characters. If humour in the novel is a way to veil controversial opinions, surely the old man would have been one of the most humorous characters of the novel.
Catch-22 structurally undermines common pro-war arguments and subverts pro-war rhetoric. In that sense, the novel is more in line with the war poetry than with war novels that
came before it, except that the novel unlike war poetry employs humour to make its point. In its sentiment, Catch-22 is similar to the poetry of Randall Jarrell, Wilfred Owen or Howard Nemerov. Diederik Oostdijk writes about Howard Nemerov’s war poetry: “The anger is reflected in Nemerov’s tone, diction, and the violent images he presents, while the isolation is shown thematically” (269). Catch-22 shows isolation and violent images, but lacks the anger of Nemerov. Although humour has a great presence in the novel, it also contains a plethora of serious observations about the negative impact of war and the senselessness of violence. Sometimes the humour veils anti-war sentiments, sometimes these sentiments are clearly articulated on the page, sometimes humour helps create a representation that is detriment to war. Adorno writes:
One can speak of the claustrophobia of humanity in the administered world, of a feeling of being incarcerated in a thoroughly societalized, closely woven, netlike environment. The denser the weave, the more one wants to escape it, whereas it is precisely its close weave that prevents any escape. (Adorno 1981: 2)
Adorno’s observation reflects the world of Catch-22. Yossarian’s unit is a closed environment, ruled by the staff of officers—a greatly flawed environment Yossarian is desperate to escape. He is held back by the staff and also by his comrades in his unit, even though the staff is uninterested in the war and he sees his comrades as menaces. Adorno poses: “People who adopt [bonds] more or less voluntarily are placed under a kind of permanent compulsion to obey orders” (ibid. 4). This holds especially true in a military situation, where disobeying orders is punishable through court martial. Yossarian is forced to obey orders from his superiors, while at the same time his friends in the unit also pressure him to behave in a certain way. Yossarian wants to escape the environment and escape the war, so as to stay alive and make it back home, but as long as the number of missions he needs to fly keep being raised, he is not allowed to leave. Ironically, the men supposed to fight for
freedom have very little freedom themselves. The military’s “hierarchical structure and its wanton use of ‘military logic’ are mere pretences of order and reason, masks to hide its essential absurdity” (Harris 38). While the world of Catch-22 is definitely absurd, it is moreover a rotten world. The absurdity is a trait of the world, but not its greatest flaw. Heller shows us a world wherein priorities are skewed, wherein death is abundant and meaningless, wherein young men are left traumatised for the good of no one. In Catch-22 “incidents and
situations are repeated, frequently with few factual changes, but with detail added to bring out the grotesque horror that underlies their absurd comedy” (Merrill 140).
Heller's repetitions are of a piece, despite their varying degrees of exactness. Each is structured as a kind of trap, for the reader is encouraged to laugh at characters and events which ultimately seem quite serious. This was precisely what Heller intended: ‘I tried consciously for a comic effect juxtaposed with the catastrophic. I wanted people to laugh and then look back with horror at what they were laughing at.’ (ibid. 143)
There is no doubt that the essence of Heller’s novel lies beneath its comic surface, however the role of that surface has been approached differently by critics. While Harris maintains that the absurdity that glazes the surface is also the theme of the novel, critics like Merrill and Richter believe that the humour is used as a ploy, and to Aldridge the humour is something to hide behind. Heller claims he wanted to juxtapose tragic subject matter with a comic style, thus jarring his reader’s reaction, and judging by critics’ reactions he succeeded. The humour does not so much hide the subject as highlights it. By eliciting an unexpected response to such a tragic subject, the reader is encouraged to reconsider the subject matter. Catch-22, then, is one of the first novels that echoes the sentiments of war poetry, but do so through humour.
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE
Kurt Vonnegut’s personal experiences in the Second World War were exceedingly traumatic. At age 22, as a prisoner of war, he witnessed one of the most violent events in history, the firebombing of Dresden, which was “much worse […] than Hiroshima” (Vonnegut 10). “Vonnegut was not killed himself in the attack by purest chance: he and a few other American POWs and their guards had available to them perhaps the only effective bomb shelter in the city, a meat locker two stories underground” (Allen 4). Coming home, Vonnegut felt compelled to write about Dresden, “to report what I had seen” (ibid. 2). “It seemed a categorical imperative that I write about Dresden, the firebombing of Dresden, since it was the largest massacre in the history of Europe and I am a person of European extraction and I, a writer, had been present. I had to say something about it” (quoted in Allen 3). For years, Vonnegut struggled putting his memory to page, but eventually at least partially succeeded in Slaughterhouse-Five. Partially succeeded, because Slaughterhouse-Five is not a novel about Dresden, exactly. The novel is a chaotic amalgamation that is part semi-autobiographical war stories, part science-fiction, part autobiographical reflection. Vonnegut “resisted the
temptation to overdramatize it, to raise it to an apotheosis of the sort Hemingway did of his wounding in World War I at the Italian Front (Allen 4). Harold Bloom, in his introduction to Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five writes: “In ‘structure’ […] Slaughterhouse-Five is a whirling medley, yet it all coheres. Billy Pilgrim as a character, does not cohere, but that is appropriate, since his schizophrenia (to call it that) is central to the book” (1). At first glance, it seems a stretch to claim that Slaughterhouse-Five has any structure at all. Much like Catch-22, the narrative of Slaughterhouse-Five jumps constantly backwards and forwards through time, and the scenes seem arranged in no particular order. When Bloom speaks of Billy Pilgrim schizophrenia, it is because Billy Pilgrim does not inhabit a single moment in time. Billy’s narrative is a tangle of the present, memories of the past and time-travel. However, as MacFarlane points out, “the complete portrait offers a sense of [Billy Pilgrim], as well as a larger appreciation of how capriciously death affects every human” (145). Unlike Catch-22, which is impossible to rearrange chronically, Slaughterhouse-Five eventually makes sense to the reader.
Like the post-World War I writers Vonnegut had to find a new way to convey the horror, a new form to reflect a new kind of consciousness. He used irony, to be sure, but he went further, by altering the fundamental processes of narration itself. More than a conventional reminisce of war,
Slaughterhouse-Five is an attempt to describe a new mode of perception that radically alters traditional concepts of time and morality. (Allen 5).
Slaughterhouse-Five was a experimental novel because it had to be; conventional narration was no longer capable to capture the world after it had seen the horrors of World War II. Peter Freese writes:
any writer who tries to reconstruct a historical atrocity of such unimaginable proportions by means of traditional fictional strategies, that is, by storifying the event through an individual narrative perspective, is bound to fail, for the sheer number of casualties transcends the limits of personal empathy. […] This is why Vonnegut has to resort to unheard-of narrative strategies and why Slaughterhouse-Five is a tale that defies all generic classifications and introduces strange new ways of dealing with the grievous lessons of history. (18)
The atrocities of Dresden were so great that a traditional narrative could not capture the horrors of the event. Although, as Harris points out, Vonnegut uses conventional literary techniques (often ironically) in combination with experimental techniques, Vonnegut relies on a radical departure from traditional narrative structure to write his novel (7). William Rodney Allen writes that: “Rather than being a traditional novel or a purely experimental,
‘Tralfamadorian’ novel, Slaughterhouse-Five is more like one superimposed on the other” (9). In the opening chapter, Vonnegut relates his difficulties in writing a book about the
firebombing of Dresden. This includes a description of the prettiest outline he made for the story. “As a trafficker in climaxes and thrills and characterization and wonderful dialogue and suspense and confrontations, I had outlined the Dresden story many times” (Vonnegut 5). Vonnegut’s outlines were for a traditional story with a beginning, middle and end, which he eventually abandoned. Instead, Vonnegut “intentionally deflates suspense by mentioning in advance the outcome of any conflict he creates,” undermining any traditional, climactic moment (Allen 7). So the outcome to any event no longer elicits any emotional response. It is expected much like the unavoidable end of all live: death.
Unsurprisingly, then, death is as anti-climactic as the outcome of any conflict in Slaughterhouse-Five. Vonnegut writes that “there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that too. And even if wars didn’t keep coming like glaciers,
