Master Thesis
Literary Studies: English Literature and Culture
The Military Bureaucracy of Catch-22:
Nazi Bureaucracy and the Bureaucracy of the Modern
University
Guus Karemaker Date: June 2016
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction...5
2. Catch-22 and its Structure...17
3. Possible Enemies...24
4. Conclusion...48
5. References...52
Abstract
This thesis tries to answer the question of who the enemy is in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. It will argue that there are several contenders for the role of the enemy in the novel, but that the main enemy is in fact the bureaucratic system of the military itself, as most of the possible enemies are part of this larger structure. By looking at both the bureaucracy in the Nazi Regime, and in particular the bureaucracy of the SS, and the bureaucracy of the modern university it will be argued that the bureaucratic system has an inherent potential for evil or immorality. It will also be argued that both the language used and the structure of the novel are part of the larger bureaucratic system within Catch-22, and that they reinforce the power of the bureaucratic system.
1. Introduction
This thesis will look at the way in which the military bureaucracy manifests itself in Joseph Heller’s famous satirical novel Catch-22. It will argue that several possible enemies can be identified in the novel, and that these enemies are in fact part of the larger bureaucratic structure of the military and its administration. Enemy here mainly refers to either a thing or person that weakens or harms something else or “[a] person who is actively opposed or hostile to someone or something.”1 This thesis will argue that the main enemy in Catch-22 is the
military bureaucracy which constantly undermines itself and those that are part of the system, and that the structure of the novel can be seen as a bureaucratic system in itself. Examples of both the bureaucracy of the modern university and of the bureaucracy of the Nazi regime will be used to highlight the potential for evil that is inherent in the bureaucratic system. First an introduction of the novel will be given, as well as several critiques on Heller’s work, both on its structure and on moral grounds. Then some examples will be given of how the bureaucracy has manifested itself in the modern university. The second section of this thesis will look more closely at the way the structure of Catch-22 and the language that is used in the novel can be seen as part of the larger military bureaucratic system. The third section of this thesis will look
at the possible enemies and how the military bureaucracy is portrayed in the novel. Finally, the fourth section will be the conclusion.
Joseph Heller started working on his most famous novel Catch-22 in 1953, but it was not published until 19612. Originally the first chapter was published with the title “Catch-18” but
was changed in order to avoid confusion with Leon Uri’s novel Mila 18 (Now and Then, 212-13). The novel received mixed reactions from critics, who mostly criticized the work for lacking structure or for its repetitiveness. Contrary to the beliefs of the critics, however, the work found recognition with readers in the United Kingdom and soon started rising in the sales charts, both in the United Kingdom and in the United States. Catch-22 tells the tale of the 256th squadron of
the United States Airforce during the Second World War, stationed on Pianosa, a real island on the coast of Italy made fictitious by Heller, fictitious in the sense that the actual island is too small to accommodate a military base, which it does in the book. The main mission of the men on the island is the bombing of enemy targets in Italy and France. On this island the reader finds Captain Yossarian, a young army bombardier and the protagonist of Heller’s novel. The striking thing about Heller’s protagonist is the clear reluctance he has with regard to fighting in the war, as is already apparent in the first chapter in the novel, where he lies in a hospital bed faking liver pain, and where he is forced to censor the letters of the enlisted men, which is required of officers who stay in the hospital. “For a little while in the morning he had to censor letters, but he was free after that to spend the rest of each day lying around idly with a clear conscience” (Catch-22, 13-14). This “clear conscience” clearly shows a reluctance to fight and kill enemy soldiers. Yossarian even admits that he is faking a liver ailment, he says: “I have everything I need and I’m quite comfortable. In fact, I’m not even sick” (21, emphasis added). It is surprising that the protagonist in what could be described as essentially a novel about war is so utterly against the whole idea of fighting and dying for one’s country. Yossarian’s attitude is most clearly defined in chapter 8 of the novel, where it states that “[o]nly a fraction of his countrymen would give up their lives to win [the war], and it was not his ambition to be among them […] 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” (90).
However, this attitude towards fighting and killing is not a feeling that is exclusively Yossarian’s. In his book On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman discusses the psychological stress that is put on the “kids, or adolescent males, whom most societies traditionally send off to do their fighting” (35), as well as the general view on enemy combatants during war time. Interestingly, Grossman claims that:
“[O]nly 15 to 20 percent of the American riflemen in combat during World War II would fire at the enemy. Those who would not fire did not run or hide … but they simply would not fire their weapons at the enemy, even when faced with repeated waves of banzai charges” (Grossman, 33)
And continues to say that:
“[T]here is within most men an intense resistance to killing their fellow man. A resistance so strong that, in many circumstances, soldiers on the battlefield will die before they can overcome it” (ibid.)
It is clear from this that the attitude portrayed in Heller’s protagonist is an attitude, albeit much exaggerated, that was shared among many of the soldiers fighting in the Second World War. And one cannot, therefore, claim that Yossarian is a coward for not wanting to fight and die. Thus, one must read Yossarian in a different light.
Several ways to read Yossarian have been proffered by various scholars. Among these scholars is Jean-Claude Seigneuret who, in his Dictionary of Literary Themes and Motifs, uses Yossarian as a classic example of an anti-hero (64), as does Brian Way in his essay “Formal Experiment and Social Discontent: Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22”” (258). A different viewpoint is that of Yossarian as the individualist hero, argued by Paul McDonald in his book Reading
‘Catch-22.’ McDonald argues that because Yossarian ultimately rejects the system of the military
bureaucracy, he can be seen as an individualist hero, who “chooses to live life on his own terms, adhering to his own sense of what is right and wrong” (McDonald, 60).
It is clear from reading Heller’s Catch-22 alongside his autobiography Now and Then:
From Coney Island to Here that the novel relies, to some degree, on Heller’s own combat
experiences, and on the friends he made during his time overseas. He served for three years in the war stationed on Corsica “where he flew sixty missions in B-25 “Mitchel” bombers” (Scoggins, 214). Most notably is the resemblance to the death of Snowden, fully revealed in the penultimate chapter of the novel. Although the gunner in Heller’s plane did not die from his wounds the episode feels almost identical. He writes: “Our [wounded] gunner was right there on the floor in front of me […] and so was the large oval wound in his thigh where a piece of flak —a small one […] had blasted all the way through” (Now and Then, 180), and that because of this he was “a small hero for a short while” (181). He continues to write, clearly resembling Yossarian’s attitude in Catch-22 that:
They were trying to kill me, and I wanted to go home. That they were trying to kill all of us each time we went up was no consolation. They were trying to kill me.
I was frightened on every mission after that one, even the certified milk runs. It could have been about then that I began crossing my fingers each time we took off and saying in silence a little prayer (ibid.).
This episode, alongside his fellow soldiers, on whom several characters are based, and his own experiences with flying missions in the army, serves as a starting point for his novel Catch-22. It is therefore important to note that, while being a work of fiction, it is based to some degree in reality.
One of the most striking pieces of critique on Heller’s Catch-22 is a review by Daedalus in 1963. What is most striking about this piece is that the author is almost to a fault extremely negative about the novel, among a myriad of positive reviews, which he dismisses as “professional wind-raises” (156). He argues that “books not worth reading are not worth reviewing and Catch-22 is worthless” (155), and that “I must make this point which I trust will not be considered trifling— that its author [Joseph Heller] cannot write” (156), the fact that the book has sold over 10 million copies worldwide would probably attest to that.
On the story itself Daedalus writes that “[Catch-22] tells no story […] It alternates serially, by means of the “advanced” technique of fragmented structure” (158), and that the book is “destructive and immoral” (161). And on the characters he writes that “[t]here are no characters. The puppets are given funny names and features, but cannot be visualized or distinguished from one another except by association with their prototypes” (158). Finally, on the structure of the novel he writes that:
In addition to arbitrary mixture, formlessness and excess are being increasingly accepted as the badge of “true art.” Because Heller’s book reads as if the pages of the manuscript had been scrambled on the way to the printer, it is viewed as experimental and “modern”
(162).
Apart from being a rather humorous review, despite the negative tone, Daedalus’ review does raise some interesting points. The fact that the author calls the characters “puppets” is mostly true, if one considers the fact that the characters are not really given much depth in the novel. The same holds for Heller’s protagonist Yossarian, who is not given any real depth until later in the novel where Heller gives the reader an insight into his inner workings and struggles
(Catch-22, 520). On the supposed lack of structure, which he explains as a mix-up on the way to the
have an underlying structure. I will expand on this in the second section of this paper. On the whole, this review stands mostly alone among a multitude of positive reviews and seems to miss most, if not all, of Heller’s themes and literary techniques.
It is interesting to note that not all of the critique on Heller’s novel address the structure of the novel, but that critics also seem to criticize Catch-22 on moral grounds. This is seen in critiques by both Harold Bloom and Norman Podhoretz, who criticize Heller’s attitude towards the war. Harold Bloom argues that:
Yossarian’s war ends with his departure for Sweden, a desertion that Heller presents as a triumph, which it has to be, if the war as aptly characterized by Heller’s parodistic cast of con-men, schemers, profiteers, and mad commanders. War is obscene, necessarily, but the war against Hitler, the SS, and the death camps was neither World War I nor the Vietnam debacle. Heller isolates the reader from the historical reality of Hitler’s evil, yet nevertheless the war against the Nazis was also Yossarian’s war ((Bloom. ‘Introduction.’
Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations: Joseph Heller’s Catch-22) 1-2. Quoted in
McDonald, 72).
And Norman Podhoretz claims that Catch-22:
[J]ustified draft evasion and even desertion as morally superior to military service. After all, if the hero of Catch-22, fighting in the best of all possible wars, was right to desert and run off to Sweden […] How much more justified were his Vietnam-era disciples in following the trail he so prophetically blazed ((Podhoretz. ‘Looking Back at Catch-22’ in
What both Bloom and Podhoretz fail to take into account is that Heller’s Catch-22 is not in fact a story about the Second World War, but as Heller has stated in interviews that “Catch-22 wasn’t really about World War Two. It was really about American society during the Cold War, during the Korean War, and about the possibility of a Vietnam” (Merrill, “Interview,” 68. Quoted in Scoggins, 213). It becomes clear through reading Catch-22 that the novel seems to use the Second World War, not as its main theme, but rather as the backdrop to the actual story. In this case both critiques fall short in their attempt to address the themes brought forward by Heller in Catch-22, but rather seem to characterize the novel as being overly anti-war and against fighting for one’s country. Furthermore, it seems unfair to lay blame at Heller’s feet for the decisions of men to evade the draft or to desert, Heller himself never evaded the draft or deserted from the army. He says in his autobiography that “we saw no incentive in avoiding the draft” (165-6). The decision of Yossarian to desert is motivated not by an anti-war mentality, but rather motivated by the decision of taking charge of his own life, and consequently motivated by his need for individual survival. Section three of this paper will deal with Yossarian in more detail.
1.2 Bureaucracy and Catch-22
David Seed argues that “[o]ne of the most striking indications of transposed emphasis in the novel is how little attention is paid to the Germans. As Heller later explained, ‘it’s essentially a conflict between people – American officers and their own government. They are the antagonists of Catch-22 – much more so than the Germans and Hitler, who are scarcely mentioned’” (Seed, 59). What is not clear from the quote of the interview above is that one of the main themes in Catch-22 is the military administration and bureaucracy. Which clearly represent an even greater peril than the Germans who shoot flak up at Yossarian and his fellow soldiers. It can, therefore, be argued that the Germans and Italians are not in fact the main enemies of the novel, but rather the military bureaucracy, and that even the officers, and to a lesser degree the soldiers, of the 256th Airforce squadron can be seen as ‘the enemy.’ Heller has
Seed, 24), clearly then, the government and its administration and bureaucracy play a major part in the novel.
If the novel portrays “American officers and their own government,” while ignoring the most obvious choice of the Germans, as being the antagonists in the novel, while also depicting the administration and bureaucracy as a powerful force, it raises the question who the enemies really are in the novel. The conversation quoted below, which happens quite early in the novel, raises this point exactly:
‘They’re trying to kill me,’ Yossarian told him calmly. ‘No one is trying to kill you,’ Clevinger cried.
‘Then why are they shooting at me?’ Yossarian asked.
‘They’re shooting at everyone,’ Clevinger answered. ‘They’re trying to kill everyone.’ […]
‘Who’s they?’ he wanted to know. ‘Who, specifically, do you think is trying to murder you?’
‘Every one of them,’ Yossarian told him. ‘Every one of whom?’
‘Every one of whom do you think?’ (Heller, 26)
The question of who the enemy is will be discussed in more detail in the third section of this thesis.
What becomes evident, when one looks at the way in which the bureaucracy manifests itself in contemporary universities, is that the bureaucratic system is a source of constant undermining of the supposed knowledge acquisition culture which is assumed in university environments. In the modern university the pursuit of knowledge has made way for the increasing need of publishing papers, acquiring research grants and ever growing administrative functions. In his article on the crisis of the modern university, Bryce Chistensen argues that:
On campus after campus, professors and administrators act not as umpires between truth and truth but rather as gladiators in often-bitter fights over resources and policy, fights in which truth counts for far less than sheer bureaucratic power (Christensen, 7).
A shift from a focus on the acquisition of knowledge to administrative and bureaucratic functions has occurred in almost all university systems. As funding for universities are cut researchers have to find these beyond the academic environment for financial aid in their research. This in turn creates a closer working relationship between the university and research corporations, but diminishes the quality of the university as a place of higher learning. Pernicka and Lücking argue that reforms in universities “has led to a de-professionalization of a growing group of temporarily employed scientific staff subject to bureaucratic control” and has “empowered top management” (592). The university bureaucracy, thus, has changed from a system that values education into a system that exploits its academic staff to increase its bureaucratic power. The bureaucratic university puts more pressure on academic staff to publish papers, acquire research grants and keeps them busy with ever growing administrative functions, while at the same time undermines research for one’s own goal, in favour of market application oriented research.
In his article on the Dutch university system, Ton Derksen of the University of Nijmegen argues that the increasing financial aspect of the university (i.e. government grants and university budgets) has caused the administration to change over the last thirty years from a “professional dictatorship,” into a democracy and back to a “professional dictatorship,” but now
run by non-academic personnel (7). Derksen claims that in the Dutch university system there is now a “near-dictatorship of the professional and the bureaucracy” (13). He goes on to argue that a shift has occurred within the academic staff, where now over 50% of the academic staff are non-academics, clearly showing the intrusion of the bureaucracy in university life. Derksen also argues that the university bureaucracy places more importance on the financial and managerial aspects of the university, according with the latest trends, instead of more focus on the acquisition of knowledge. Universities are now run by non-academic professionals and the bureaucracy, which is more focussed on guarding its own interest (15) and less on the university as an institute of higher learning. While the bureaucracies keep growing, the academic staff is now kept busy by the bureaucrats and non-academic personnel by having to provide more reports and more plans, effectively shifting the expected focus on education and research of professors and academic professionals to ever growing administrative and bureaucratic tasks. Striking about Derksen’s paper is that he argues that there exists a Catch-22 situation in the Dutch university system. He writes:
If we did not present new programs – although the present ones were good – we would have to face a financial cut. If however we presented new programs, we confirmed that the government was correct in its judgment that the programs were in need of improvement and so the government had been quite right in demanding that we should improve these programs (23).
Derksen concludes his paper by arguing that the changes in research and education policies that were implemented by the bureaucracies, be they government or university bureaucracies, were the result of financial constraints and not “the well-though-out educational policies as they were presented” (ibid.).
In his paper on the bureaucratic aspects of the reformation of the Mexican universities, Imanol Ordorika argues that there has been significant pressure by both public and private sectors for “financial and administrative change” (403). This has resulted, according to Ordorika
in a crisis which is “essentially a consequence of the lack of academic leadership and legitimacy of governing bureaucracies” (ibid.). He reasons that the bureaucracies “[i]n their eagerness to maintain control over the institutions of higher education […] [have] obscured the critical issues of modern university life.” And that they have “exercised power in such a conservative fashion that the present condition of university bureaucracy appears as a clear obstacle for reform in higher education” (404). Ordorika places blame at the modernization of the university, which resulted in a focus on the administration and with increasing its efficiency, at the expense of educational opportunities for many potential students. Changes were made in the governing of the universities, where they were first essentially autonomous institutions, with a focus on higher education, the universities were now reformed to allow for a more centralized decision making apparatus, which reduced the autonomy of the universities and increased the power of the bureaucracies. The power of the bureaucracy had increased exponentially, which gave it the power to stop reform agreements made by the universities from being implemented. Ordorika argues that:
“The domination [of political groups within the university and relations in the Federal government] is institutionalized in a powerful bureaucracy. This bureaucracy represents its social base and at the same time is relatively independent from it and, in some occasions, even from the Mexican government” (409).
He continues to argue that a bureaucratic apparatus was created to govern the entirety of the university system, which resulted in a focus on politics within the universities, which in turn excluded the academic staff from participating and reserved this for the upper levels of the bureaucratic system, both internally and externally (415).
What this study on the reform of the Mexican universities shows is that through the bureaucratization of the university system the universities become less and less autonomous, and relinquish their power to the bureaucratic system that is independent from both the universities and the government, and which results in an ever growing amount of
“administrative and legal affairs” (416). The bureaucratic system essentially gained power over the governing systems of the universities themselves. The main focus has, as it did with the Dutch universities, shifted from higher education to a more business oriented university, one that is more concerned with the financial and political aspects of the universities and their research than on the acquisition of knowledge.
Finally, in his paper “Which Future, University or Bureaucracy?” Jim Binder argues for the reformation of the universities not following the bureaucratic educational model but rather a model based on creativity and freedom. He argues that in the educational bureaucracy teachers are rewarded for giving “quick and dirty lessons so that they can pursue more prestigious interests such as publishing, administration […] without regard for the educational mission” (29).
Binder argues for a university that places more importance on “creative productivity” instead of “forced productivity” (30). A creative university, Binder argues, is one that focuses on higher education and freedom, and that these values contrast with those of the university bureaucracy, which focuses on administrative procedures and “forced productivity.” Binder’s creative university should provide academics with the freedom to pursue one’s own goals, without the constant financial and administrative constraints. He reasons that the universities are being modelled too much like larger corporations, that only have regard for the near future.
Binder’s arguments reflect the findings of both Derksen and Ordorika, who also argue that the changes made in the governing systems of the universities now focus more on the financial and administrative aspects of the bureaucratic system. What these examples show is that bureaucracies have gained significant power over the universities, and that the university as a relatively autonomous entity with a focus on higher education has now become something that resembles a large corporation that focuses on the market application of research. What also becomes clear from these examples is that one can easily see the bureaucracy as being detrimental to the autonomy and governing of institutions such as the university. One can, therefore, argue that the bureaucracy has the potential to take the role of the enemy upon itself.
2. Catch-22 and its Structure
This section will argue that both the structure as well as the language of Catch-22 can be seen to be part of the larger structure that is the military bureaucracy and its administration in the novel. It will be argued that the repetitiveness of the novel, largely because of the significant amount of flash-forwards and flashbacks in the novel, can in fact be seen as resembling the repetitiveness of the bureaucratic administration, and that the structure reinforces the circularity of the Catch-22 itself. It will also be argued that the language in Catch-22 supports the arbitrariness of Catch-22 and that language is a way for those at the higher echelons of the military bureaucracy to retain control over those at the lower echelons.
Most of the critique on Heller’s novel revolved around its structure. It was said to be repetitive and some even called the novel completely unstructured. While it is true that
Catch-22 can seem rather repetitive, which will be discussed later in this section, it is not true that Catch-22 is unstructured. Clues are given by Heller as to the supposed chronology of the novel,
and Heller certainly had a chronology in mind when he wrote Catch-22 using cards and charts, however, due to some error on his part the chronology does not precisely fit together, but the error is a slight one. It has been established by both Clinton Burhans and Doug Gaukroger that
Catch-22 does have a chronological structure (Merrill, 140).
Heller’s novel is divided into chapters named after characters in the book, this is misleading, however, since the chapters do not necessarily revolve around the character used as a chapter heading. Seed argues that this is because the characters are unstable and as such the chapters are not structured around them (Seed, 39).
It has been argued by several scholars (Seed, Merrill, Burhans, Richter, Soloman) that
Catch-22 is actually divided into three sections or parts. The three sections are structured
around the appearance of the soldier in white in the hospital where Yossarian flees to from time to time. The soldier in white is an interesting concept that marks the beginning of each of these
three sections, he appears in chapter 1, 17 and 34, seemingly lifeless and completely covered in bandages with just holes where his mouth should be and where the tubes stick out (17). Heller emphasises this seeming lifelessness by describing the method with which the soldier in white is ‘kept alive,’ creating quite an absurd image of a person, if it can be called a person at all:
A silent zinc pipe rose from the cement of his groin and was coupled to a slim rubber hose that carried waste from his kidneys and dripped it efficiently into a clear, stoppered jar on the floor. When the jar on the floor was empty, the jar feeding his elbow empty, and the two were simply switched quickly so that the stuff could drip back into him (Heller, 17).
The soldier in white’s anonymity is symbolic for the way the bureaucracy views people in its system. Without a name and without prove of life or death the soldier in white represents the way the bureaucracy treats people not as individuals but as faceless entities stripped of their humanity. The novel itself can also be read in the way the soldier in white is read, in other words, the novel itself revolves around the dehumanization of the soldier in war time by the bureaucracy and its administration, clearly seen by the fact that names inhibit a form of power for the administration. An example of this is the fact that Doc Daneeka is pronounced dead because his name was on a flight roster of a plane that crashes, regardless of the fact that Doc Daneeka had never been on the flight itself: “‘The records show that you went up in McWatt’s plane to collect some flight time. You didn’t come down in a parachute, so you must have been
killed in the crash’” (432). Doc Daneeka’s case will be discussed in more detail in the next section.
While the soldier in white represents the three sections into which the novel is divided, the overall tone of the novel grows increasingly darker as the novel progresses. Yossarian’s friends and allies die, go missing, or are revealed to be mentally unstable. It is also in the final section that the reader gains the full story of Snowden’s death. Snowden is one of the constants in the novel, dead since the beginning, much like the dead man in Yossarian’s tent, Mudd, but unlike Mudd Snowden continuously dies throughout the novel, with increasing detail until his death is finally fully revealed in the penultimate chapter of the novel. Jan Solomon argues, in “The Structure of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22,” that “[m]en […] make their tentative way through a complex pattern of past and present; there is no possibility of progress, only the near certitude of death” (56-7). There is indeed no real sense of progress in the novel, perpetuated by the circularity of the story. There is, however, progress in Heller’s protagonist, who grows more and more pensive as the novel progresses in the same manner as the overall tone of the novel. Heller only reveals more about the inner working of his main character towards the end of the novel in chapter 39 “The eternal city.” In this chapter Yossarian finds the apartments of the whores in Rome deserted and ransacked, evidently by the military police, who chased all the girls out of the apartments under the law of Catch-22, which will be discussed in detail in the next section. Yossarian now seems to develop a sense of morality not directly linked to his survival instinct, in other words, he feels the need to help another human being. Because this character development happens quite late in the novel, progress is slow and seemingly non-existent. This is also because the text revolves around the discontinuity of language and the
refusal of a sense of stability within the text itself (Seed, 39), relying instead on the circularity of the structure and arbitrariness of character, which deny any real sense of growth within the characters or the story itself.
Robert Merrill proposes that the structure in Heller’s Catch-22 is actually “a brilliant strategy to expose not only the worst excesses of the modern bureaucracy but also the complacent acceptance of this system on the part of everyone involved” (Merrill, 139). It is in fact only Yossarian, and to some small degree perhaps also the Chaplain, who learns that the only way for him to gain any sense of liberty is through lying and “detach[ing] language from truth” (Seed, 35), that tries to undermine the existing bureaucracy by his refusal to be a part of it. His refusal alone, however, is not enough to free himself from the system, it is only at the end with his desertion that Yossarian can disentangle himself from the military bureaucratic procedures.
However, the ending of the novel is problematic according to Gary Davis who argues that there are two distinct fictions in Heller’s Catch-22. The first is the Army and its “closed language of discontinuity” (76), and the second is the idea of Sweden as a sort of paradise free of the discourse of the first fiction. What makes the ending problematic according to Davis is that Heller does not disclose what kind of fiction Catch-22 is, and which kind of fiction is chosen by Yossarian. Davis argues that “the novel does not specify whether Yossarian’s flight expresses either a preference for the age-old dream of immediate experience or a desire for a discourse of self-reflexively interplaying levels of fiction” (ibid.). Yossarian’s flight, however, does not necessarily have to conform to either of the fictions proposed by Davis, but should rather be seen as an escape from all manners of discourse. Yossarian’s desertion is not choice between
two fictions but a choice between life and his assimilation into a system he has been trying to undermine throughout the novel. Sweden, as imagined by Yossarian, is indeed fictitious, but it is more a symbol of freedom, and because his friend Orr has made it safely to Sweden it also becomes a possibility of that freedom, regardless of whether this freedom is fictitious or not. There is no real choice here anyway when one of the choices is essentially the destruction of the character.
In comparison with Kafka’s The Trial, on which is the trial against the chaplain is based, David Seed argues that “Heller […] presents the military administration as atomised, riven by personal rivalry and ludicrous in its individual actions” (64). The structure in Catch-22 reflects this sense of disjointedness, as the novel jumps back and forth through time, sometimes even several times within the same chapter, and leaves the reader with a false sense of temporal continuity, without any real hope of being able to disentangle the messy timeline. This false sense of temporal continuity in its turn reinforces the overall structure of the novel, as “discontinuity not continuity [is] the norm throughout the novel” (Seed, 39).
One of the interesting things about the structure of the novel is that its repetitiveness, with its plethora of structurally confusing flashbacks and flash-forwards, and the circularity of the Catch-22 itself, is quite reminiscent of the endless amount of repetitive paperwork that is involved with the modern bureaucracy and its administration. It can be argued that the overall structure of the novel, seen itself as a large bureaucratic structure, combined with the language of the military bureaucracy, actually serves as a way to deny the reader any real sense of structure within the text. Instead the reader is led through a maze of past and present never knowing for sure which came first.
2.1 Language in Catch-22
There has, apart from the structure of Catch-22, also been considerable focus on the language in the novel. The novel is filled with unsolvable contradictions such as: “Under Colonel Korn’s rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did” (Catch-22, 49); and “he was welcomed by a […] staff sergeant […] who informed him graciously that he could go right in, since Major Major was out” (347). What is clear from both examples is that the reader is left with a contradiction that has no solution, and clearly reflect the arbitrary nature of Catch-22 itself, which is defined in the novel also as an unsolvable problem, stating, for example, that those who wish to be grounded (i.e. not having to fly more missions) have to be crazy, however, to get grounded one has to ask to be grounded which means that one is not crazy, because wanting to fly more missions is a sign of insanity.
Laura Hidalgo-Downing argues that “negation is a crucial phenomenon in the novel because it determines the development of a particular world view” (221), this world view is represented by the rejection of expectations, and the negation of fake ‘facts,’ such as: “[t]his sordid, vulturous, diabolical old man reminded Nately of his father because the two were nothing at all alike” (311). Negation in the novel serves as a way to establish that words are not necessarily related to things and that there is no clear correlation between what is said and what is meant. Negation in Catch-22 creates, much like Catch-22 itself, a certain unescapable argument that is unsolvable.
Finally, names are important in the novel, because names have power and offer control. Yossarian changes names with A. Fortiori in the hospital and becomes, for all intents and purposes, A. Fortiori in the eyes of the hospital administration. He signs censored letters as Washington Irving thereby creating both an immense amount of problems, but more importantly he creates a person solely with language. Doc Daneeka is administratively or bureaucratically dead because his name was on a flight roster. The commanding officers are always referred to by their military title. Nately’s whore and Nately’s whore’s kid sister are only referred to by their relation with Nately and are never given proper names of themselves, effectively diminishing them as human beings. That the military bureaucracy takes full advantage of names shows the potential power in names, both as a way of control and as a way of creation.
3. Possible Enemies
Enemy is a bit of an unprecise term, especially in Catch-22. “The enemy,” Yossarian tells Clevinger, “is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on” (Catch-22, 161). Thus, enemy is an overarching term that needs to be specified more in order to give a clear indication as to who the enemy truly is. This section will look closely at several characters and examine the way they are detrimental to the war effort, and will show that the officers, both those in command functions and their subordinates, are in fact part of the larger structure of military bureaucracy. However, while they all seem to be out for themselves, regardless of the lives of their subordinates or even the war effort, they cannot truly be seen as the enemy in
Catch-22, or at least not one of the major enemies. To highlight why the military bureaucracy
can be seen as the enemy examples from the bureaucracy in the Nazi regime will be given. As an introduction to this section, David Seed posits the following regarding Yossarian’s ideas on who the enemy is in the novel:
Yossarian’s logic represent an effort to detach himself from mass purposes and to rationalise his own individual survival. It makes no difference whether he is shot at by Germans or by other American, or whether he is poisoned by food in the mess. ‘Enemy’
becomes an umbrella term for all forces trying to kill him, forces which are summarised externally and internally (Seed, 28, emphasis added).
An addition needs to be made to Seed’s argument, and that is that the term ‘enemy’ need not only refer to those that wish to kill him, in fact most of the characters in the novel, with the Germans as an obvious exception, never actually try to harm Yossarian. If the definition given above is used, alongside Seed’s use of enemy as an umbrella term, one can argue that there are several possible enemies portrayed in the novel, enemies that do not necessarily have to be on
the opposite side of Yossarian. The possible enemies that will be discussed in this section can be summarised as follows:
1. The Germans
2. The Commanding Officers 3. Milo Minderbinder
4. Yossarian
5. The Military Administration and Bureaucracy
3.1 The Germans
Although it has already been touched on briefly, it is important to discuss the role of the Germans in Catch-22 in a bit more detail. What becomes clear in the novel is that the Germans, although they were the enemies in the Second World War, are not as prominent in Catch-22 as one would expect of a novel situated in the Second World War. Even though the general tendency of characters in the novel is to see the Germans as the enemy, greatly influenced of course by the fact that the Germans are shooting flak at the American planes, they are not discussed at great lengths. One of the most striking mentions of the Germans is Milo Minderbinder’s attitude towards them, Milo Minderbinder will be discussed in more detail later on in this section. Milo argues that:
‘[T]he Germans are not our enemies,’ [Milo] declared. ‘Oh I know what you’re going to say. 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. Don’t you understand that I have to respect the sanctity of my contract with Germany?’ (Catch-22, 326).
This passage again raises the question as to who or what the enemy is then. It is true that the allied were at war with the Germans, but if they are not the enemy, one has to assume that something else or someone else is.
There are several more mentions of the Germans, but they are mostly only passing references such as the “Hermann Goering Division” (195), “There was Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo […] and they were out to kill [Yossarian]” (220), “before the Germans sent out a boat from Spezia to take us prisoner” (392), and “there were no German fighters any more” (419). Most of the references of the Germans occur either when the squad is flying combat missions or in connection to Milo’s syndicate. It is clear, therefore, that the Germans play a role that is rather supportive towards the story as a background theme, than that they appear in actual opposition to the characters.
3.2 The Commanding Officers
More possible contenders for the role of enemies are the commanding officers, and to a lesser extent also the other officers like Captain Aardvark and Sergeant Whitcomb. What is meant here with the term commanding officers is the officers who have authority over the other characters. It has already been established that the Germans, although they were the enemies in World War II, are not the main enemies in the novel. This section will further explore the different officers and argue why they could also be considered to be enemies of at least Yossarian, and perhaps even the common good, or at least the war effort.
The highest commanding officers that are named in the novel are General Dreedle and General Peckem. These characters are most notably represented as being overly hostile towards each other, Peckem is introduced by Heller as follows: “General P. P. Peckem […] had moved his headquarters up to Rome and had nothing better to do while he schemed against General Dreedle” (38). He and Dreedle are at constant odds. Dreedle is the commanding officer of the fighting outfit to which Yossarian belongs. Peckem, on the other hand, is the special operations general, who is constantly trying to force General Dreedle out of his job and take the position for himself. General Peckem is, thus, more preoccupied with General Dreedle than with the war
itself, not unlike most of the higher officers. He even says to Colonel Scheisskopf, after his transfer overseas, that “‘Dreedle’s on our side, and Dreedle is the enemy […] I keep invading his jurisdiction with comments and criticisms that are really none of my business’” (409).
General Dreedle is the lesser of two evils, he cares mostly about either driving his son in law, Colonel Moodus, crazy with his attractive nurse, who he keeps around constantly, or about the war. To this effort he sees the officers and enlisted men under his command as “military quantities” (276) and only wants them to do what there are told to do, other than that they are free to do whatever they please. Although Colonel Cathcart thinks General Dreedle hates him, it is rather that the general does not really care one way or the other about his subordinates, as long as they do their duty.
One significant event with General Dreedle is when the men, instigated by Yossarian, start to moan during a pre-mission briefing. Major Danby, who is counting down to a watch synchronization, is completely unaware of the whole episode and, accidentally, lets out a moan after he notices that nobody was paying attention to him during the briefing. Enraged by this final moan, General Dreedle orders Major Danby be taken outside and shot. Fortunately, before this happens General Dreedle is told that he is not allowed to do this. He asks: “you mean I can’t shoot anyone I want to?” (283), and lets Major Danby go free and unharmed. Apart from this event with Major Danby, General Dreedle is quite fixated on the war and as a result does not really fit the definition of an enemy.
General Peckem, on the other hand, is more focused on his own agenda rather than on the war. General Peckem welcomes Colonel Scheisskopf to his outfit, who enables him to add more officers and equipment to his arsenal to “contribute to the prestige of his position and increase his striking power in the war he had declared against General Dreedle” (404). This welcome does not stay friendly for long as he later sets Colonel Scheisskopf and Colonel Cargill against each other for his own amusement, ordering them to assist each other but later denying it.
Another invention of General Peckem is the idea of bomb patterns with the idea of getting neat aerial photos out of it. He explains to Colonel Scheisskopf that “[a] bomb pattern is
a term I dreamed up just several weeks ago. It means nothing, but you’d be surprised at how rapidly it’s caught on […] I’ve got all sorts of people convinced I think it’s important for the bombs to explode close together” (411). What this shows is that General Peckem’s real interest lies in creating disorder in both his and General Dreedle’s department for his own amusement. Thus, General Peckem seems to fit in the definition of enemy, insofar as that his actions weaken the integrity of the military system.
Another possible enemy is Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, a mail clerk at the Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters (158) who continuously goes AWOL (absent without official leave), and as punishment is demoted to private and has to dig holes. A minor character by all standards, but one that has significant power within the Air Force because of his position as mail clerk. He becomes quite a powerful figure because he destroys, forges or intercepts mail, and because of this becomes more powerful than most of the generals. Most of his time, however, he spends trying to humiliate General Peckem, who was the first person to demote him. This is the main reason why Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen can be considered as an enemy. Other than that, however, besides the fact that he is only out for himself, the minor role he plays in the novel is not enough to make him one of the major enemies, but rather more of a nuisance to just about everyone who has to deal with him. That he joins Milo’s syndicate towards the end of the novel, when the syndicate has grown exponentially and is now the most powerful force in the war, only confirms that he is truly out for himself.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf, which literally translates into ‘shithead’ from German, is introduced in chapter 8 as an officer in charge of training recruits in the Cadet School in Santa Ana, California (92). Lieutenant Scheisskopf is “ambitious and humorless […] who confronted his responsibilities soberly and smiled only when some rival officer at the Santa Ana Army Air Force Base came down with a lingering disease” (93), and who is obsessed with having and winning parades. He is one of the few people who is glad that the war broke out because it gave him the opportunity to wear his uniform and order men around (ibid.). Lieutenant Scheisskopf is later promoted to colonel and eventually to general. Most striking about his character is the hatred he has for Clevinger, who attended the Cadet School alongside Yossarian under Lieutenant Scheisskopf. Heller writes that Lieutenant Scheisskopf:
[C]ared very deeply […] about bringing Clevinger up on charges before the Action Board for conspiring to advocate the overthrow of the cadet officers Lieutenant Scheisskopf had appointed. […] Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskopf had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times. Such men were dangerous, and even the new cadet officers whom Clevinger had helped into office were eager to give damning testimony against him. The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with (94).
This hatred towards Clevinger eventually leads to Clevinger being brought before the Action Board on charges of “‘breaking ranks while in formation, felonious assault, indiscriminate behavior, mopery, high treason […]’” (100) and more, all because he “stumbled while marching to class” (ibid.), finally giving Lieutenant Scheisskopf something to charge him with. Clevinger is, of course, found guilty by the Action Board. While this is a rather strange turn of events for Clevinger, seen also by the way the interrogation is portrayed in the novel, it is the final thoughts of Clevinger himself at the end of the chapter that best describe the animosity that can be experienced even by men who supposedly are on his side. Heller describes Clevinger’s thoughts as follows:
These three men [on the Action Board] who hated him spoke his language and wore his uniform […] [he] understood instantly that nowhere in the world, not in all the fascist tank or planes or submarines […] the crack Hermann Goering Antiaircraft Division […] and everywhere else, were there men who hated him more (107).
Lieutenant Scheisskopf does not really play a major role in the remainder of the novel, except maybe as a torn in General Peckem’s side, when he is shipped overseas and later promoted to general, and becomes General Peckem’s commanding officer (493).
Lieutenant Scheisskopf, like many of the commanding officers, is only out for himself, could not care less about either fighting in the war or even winning the war, but rather only wishes to wear his uniform and have parades. Therefore, while clearly an enemy of Clevinger, Scheisskopf does not really fit the definition of an enemy in the sense that he is detrimental to the common good or the war effort.
Another minor character is Captain Black, the camp’s intelligence officer. An avid anti-communist, his main concern is to make every man on Pianosa sign loyalty oaths every time they need to either get equipment or even to have a meal at the mess hall. The only person who is not allowed to sign the loyalty oaths is Major Major, with whom Captain Black has a personal vendetta. Heller writes:
“To Captain Black, every officer who supported his Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was a competitor, and he planned and plotted twenty-four hours a day to keep one step ahead. He would stand second to none in his devotion to country” (147).
And that:
“‘From now on I’m going to make every son of a bitch who comes to my intelligence tent sign a loyalty oath. And I’m not going to let that bastard Major Major sign one even if he wants to’” (ibid.).
Apart from his personal vendetta with Major Major, and from repeatedly referring to his subordinates as “bastards,” the only other thing that is mentionable about Captain Black is the fact that he is constantly antagonizing Nately by sleeping with Nately’s Whore and then telling Nately all about it in great detail. He is also extremely satisfied when he hears that Colonel Cathcart has volunteered the squad to the very dangerous bombing of Bologna. Captain Black is
rather more of a bully than an actual enemy, and it is his “Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade” that puts him in this list since it significantly weakens the overall structure of the military operations on Pianosa.
Colonel Cathcart and Lieutenant Colonel Korn are quite a comedic duo. Colonel Cathcart is on this list because he continuously raises the number of missions the men are required to fly before they can be sent home, and never actually sends anyone home. He can, therefore, be seen as one of the major reasons for the deaths of many of Yossarian’s friends. Moreover, the only reason he raises the number of missions is to make himself look good and to get the recognition and promotions that he thinks he deserves. This is best summarized by Gary Davis who argues that Yossarian and his friend are “[u]nable to ever finish their combat tours and [are] equally unable to escape from Cathcart’s system, the fliers one by one fall victim to German flak and their own commander’s zeal for advancement” (71).
His right hand man, Colonel Korn is the smarter of the two, and is constantly trying to undermine Colonel Cathcart every step of the way, while seemingly trying to help him. This actually makes Colonel Korn the more dangerous of the two, because, while Colonel Cathcart seemingly has all the power, it is his right hand man who holds to strings.
Colonel Korn is quite a sadistic character as well. When the men are ordered to bomb a village on a mountain to stop German reinforces from arriving at the front, they try to get out of the mission because they do not want to bomb the village and its inhabitants, because they consider it to be cruel, for obvious reasons of course. Colonel Korn replies with: “‘Cruel? […] Would it be any less cruel to let those two German divisions down to fight with our troops? American lives are at stake, too, you know. Would you rather see American blood spilled?’” (Catch-22, 414). When the men continue to object he threatens them with the dangerous Bologna mission.
3.2.1 The Officers
One final addition to the list of officers that fall into the category of potential enemies has to be made, and that is the other, lower, officers. The lower level officers, with the exclusion of Milo and Yossarian who will be discussed later, do not necessarily have the same amount of power as the commanding officers described above, however, they are in their own rights also contenders for the position of enemy. Three of these officers will be briefly discussed here: Aarfy, Dobbs and Chief White Halfoat.
Aarfy, or Captain Aardvark, is Yossarian’s navigator and arguably one of the most despicable characters in the novel. He constantly pretends not being able to hear Yossarian over the com in the plane completely infuriating Yossarian, the major reason, however, that Aarfy is listed here is that he has a complete lack of conscience regarding other people. He happily describes, for instance, that he and his fellow frat members once “tricked these two dumb high-school girls […] into the fraternity house and made them put out for all the fellows […] by threatening to call up their parents and say they were putting out for us. We even smacked their faces a little when they started to complain” (306). But the worst thing he does in the novel is murdering a girl in Rome because he raped her, and gets away with it because Yossarian is there without official leave and gets arrested instead. Heller describes the scene as follows:
She had sallow skin and myopic eyes, and none of the men had ever slept with her because none of the men had ever wanted to, none but Aarfy, who had raped her once that same evening and had then held her prisoner in a clothes closet for almost two hours with his hand over her mouth until the civilian curfew sirens sounded and it was unlawful for her to be outside.
Then he threw her out the window (527).
This is the only time that Aarfy loses his composure and is truly afraid, this is, however, unjustified because the Military Police seems to only care about Yossarian being AWOL.
Dobbs only appears in this list because of his incessant plotting to kill Colonel Cathcart for raising the number of missions. Dobbs argues that “‘Colonel Cathcart’s the murderer […] [he’s] the one who’s going to murder us all if we don’t do something to stop him” (381). He is quite insistent on Yossarian giving him the green light to go ahead with killing Colonel Cathcart, who, refuses to be a part of the plan. It is ironic that the moment Yossarian finally agrees with Dobbs and wants to kill Colonel Cathcart, Dobbs no longer feels the need to go ahead with the plan. It is this desire to kill his commanding officer that puts Dobbs on this list, although he cannot truly be considered as an enemy, he is merely a man who has become mentally unstable because of the war.
Finally, Chief White Halfoat, who is on this list for his threatening of Captain Flume, who becomes terrified of Chief White Halfoat for the following reason:
Captain Flume was obsessed with the idea that Chief White Halfoat would tiptoe up to his cot one night when he has sound asleep and slit his throat open for him from ear to ear. Captain Flume had obtained this idea from Chief White Halfoat himself, who did tiptoe up to his cot one night as he was dozing off, to hiss portentously that one night when he, Captain Flume, was sound asleep he, Chief White Halfoat, was going to slit his throat open for him from ear to ear. (76)
After this Captain Flume flees into the woods beside the camps and does not return to camp until Chief White Halfoat dies of pneumonia. This again does not truly constitute an evil character in Chief White Halfoat, but shows that he, much like Captain Black, is merely a bully.
3.3 Milo Minderbinder and M&M Enterprises
One of the most interesting characters of the novel is Milo Minderbinder and his illustrious syndicate M&M Enterprises, in which everyone has a share, although none of the shareholders ever see anything more than a piece of paper with “Share” written on it. Milo’s enterprise is almost completely uncomprehensive, with trades that make almost no sense; buying eggs for seven cents apiece and selling them for five cents apiece, and still make a profit. Milo is made the mess officer and is in charge of organizing the mess hall, making sure the officers and enlisted men are fed a decent meal. This position in the mess hall quickly turns into an international enterprise with planes flying everywhere to do trading, even with the supposed enemies, the Germans, as can be seen from this passage in the novel:
One day Milo […] came flying back from Madagascar leading four German bombers filled with yams, collards, mustard green and black-eyed Georgia peas. Milo was dumbfounded when he stepped down to the ground and found a contingent of M.P.’s waiting to imprison the German pilots and confiscate their planes. Confiscate! The mere word was anathema to him […].
‘Is this Russia?’ Milo assailed them incredulously at the top of his voice. ‘Confiscate?’ he shrieked, as though he could not believe his own ears. ‘Since when is it the policy of the American government to confiscate the private property of its citizens? Shame on you! Shame on all of you for even thinking such a horrible though.’
‘But Milo,’ Major Danby interrupted timidly, ‘we’re at war with Germany, and those are German planes’ (322-23).
M&M Enterprises quickly takes over the entire black market trade, and becomes quite a powerful force in the novel. Milo and his syndicate are quite clearly symbolic for the private enterprises and their power, even over the military. James Harold argues that Milo’s antics should not be the major concern, but rather the “coupling of private industry and military
power” (158), this, however falls short in explaining Milo’s vast influence in the novel, as will be shown below.
Why Milo can be considered as an enemy is because he seems to lack any sort of conscience. He takes contracts with both the Germans and the Americans, at one point even at the same time. He is contracted by the American army to bomb a bridge at Orvieto that is held by the Germans but at the same time he is contracted by the German military to defend the bridge from the American attack, with a bonus for shooting down American planes (Catch-22, 324). A genius move on Milo’s part, who essentially had to do nothing at all but sign his name on both contracts, because both sides were more than happy to furnish their own side.
Perhaps the most important reason for Milo’s consideration as enemy is Milo’s bombing of his own squadron: “[A]ll Milo’s fighters and bombers took off, joined in formation directly overhead and began dropping bombs on the group. He had landed another contract with the Germans, this time to bomb his own outfit” (327). The most striking thing in this event is the reason for the bombing, which is not necessarily the contract with the Germans, although Milo is vehemently strict about contracts, but it is rather the profit made from bombing his outfit, but even more striking is the reactions to this treasonous event:
This time Milo had gone too far. Bombing his own men and planes was more than even the most phlegmatic observer could stomach, and it looked like the end for him. […] Not one voice was raised in his defense. Decent people everywhere were affronted, and Milo was all washed up until he opened his books to the public and disclosed the tremendous profit he had made. He could reimburse the government for all the people and property he had destroyed and still have enough money left over to continue buying Egyptian cotton. Everybody, of course, owned a share. And the sweetest part of the whole deal was that there really was no need to reimburse the government at all (329).
As far as the government and its people is concerned Milo is not the enemy. However, the blatant disregard for the safety of the people of his own outfit and the clear self-serving aspect of the syndicate, which enriches Milo himself who claims everyone has a share but never delivers on his part, clearly fits Milo in the definition of the enemy provided earlier. Milo may regularly claim that “what’s good for M&M Enterprises is good for the country,” however, it seems that what is good for M&M Enterprises, which is actually an acronym for Milo & Minderbinder Enterprises, is good for Milo Minderbinder. It is also with this creed that Milo justifies taking gas canisters out of life jackets (390) and taking the morphine out of the first aid kit in Yossarian’s plane during the mission when Snowden dies (550).
Milo’s dealings with the Germans does not stop at using their planes and bombing his own squadron, but Milo goes even further and shows that he actually has enormous power to influence the war. Milo sells “petroleum and ball bearings to Germany at good prices to make a good profit and help maintain a balance of power between contending forces” (466, emphasis added). Scenes like this one give a clear indication of the power Milo exerts over both sides of the war, while enriching himself. It is Milo who becomes Mayor of Palermo, Cairo, Assistant Governor-General of Malta and more.
Heller himself has stated in an interview that Milo is not consciously evil, but that the bad things that happen because of him are merely by-product of his entrepreneurial spirit. Milo is simply unaware of the bad things that happen to him (Vosevich, 94). In a different interview at the United States Airforce Academy (quoted in Vosevich) Heller states again that, when asked whether Milo can be put on the same level as the Fascist leader opposite the United States in the war, Milo is not an evil character but actually morally good, and that he is unaware or does not care about the things he causes. Heller continues to say that “[Milo] is just motivated by profitable opportunities, and there is nothing externally malevolent or destructive about him. He has no real motivation towards power–towards domination” (96).
Milo certainly is an interesting character in Catch-22 and although he might have a high sense of morality, the events caused by Milo and his syndicate and the deals with the primary enemy of the Allied Forces in the war suggest that his character is less then reputable,
regardless of what Heller himself has stated. One can simply argue that Milo is an enemy in
Catch-22.
3.4 Yossarian
It might seem a bit odd to include the protagonist in this list of possible enemies, however, if one takes into account the definition of an enemy given above, it becomes clear that Yossarian fits this description, and it is perhaps less surprising when one considers Yossarian as an anti-hero. There are several instances in the novel where the actions of Yossarian are actually counter-productive to the war effort. While Yossarian’s actions are clearly a way of rebelling against the system, his rebelling also puts the lives of his comrades in danger, and furthermore, his rebellion also strengthens his part in the same system he is trying to get out of, as it continues his “involvement with the system” (Blues, 71). It is only at the end of the novel, when he deserts, that Yossarian is finally free of the military administration and bureaucracy, although this is again detrimental to the war effort.
Yossarian’s rebellion starts in the very first chapter of the novel, when he is forced to censor letters of the enlisted men. Bored by the monotony of the reading and censoring of the letters, Yossarian invents games for himself. He starts of by blacking out all modifiers then moves on to blacking out articles (Catch-22, 14), or everything but the salutations (15). Finally, “[w]hen he had exhausted all possibilities in the letters, he began attacking the names and addresses on the envelopes, obliterating whole homes and streets […] as though he were God” (ibid.). There is, however, a catch: all officers have to sign their name on the censored letters. Yossarian signs his name on the letters he has read and those he has not read he signs with either “Washington Irving,” or “Irving Washington” (ibid.). This starts a manhunt for a man that does not exist within the squadron, no traces of anyone by that name can be found. This act of rebellion, even if it was just to break the monotony, has serious repercussions for the Chaplain, who is interrogated and then has to await punishment, because he is believed to be the elusive Washington Irving, or Irving Washington.
There are several more instances where Yossarian’s actions are detrimental to the good of the squadron or to the war effort. He pretends that his radio is not working in order not to fly a presumably dangerous mission, and even pulls rank to get his way (182). This clearly selfish reason puts his own squadron under extra strain as they are now fewer in number to complete the mission, although of course his fellow soldiers in his own plane see no fault in his action, partially because they believe that the radio is indeed broken, and are happy to return to base camp, their reactions are even celebratory. However, the fact remains that the actions of Yossarian have effectively weakened his squadron, which clearly corresponds to the definition of an enemy given earlier.
Blues argues that “[e]ngaging in [parody of Catch-22], Yossarian can successfully harass those he outranks, remaining vulnerable not only to the deliberate machinations of those who outrank him, but to the accidental disasters precipitated by his own deceptions” (70). The games he plays with the censoring of the letters cause major problems for the Chaplain, whose name he signs below one of the letters, as well as results in two C.I.D. (Criminal Investigation Division) men to follow each other around the camp trying to find Washington Irving. His actions result in Major Danby almost getting shot on orders of General Dreedle. He goes AWOL and, perhaps even because of this Aarfy avoids getting arrested. He sows discord and fear when he lies about a new weapon the Germans have that can glue entire flight formations together (Catch-22, 162). He moves the bomb line before the Bologna mission, giving his superior officers the impression that the city has already been captured by the Allied Forces, which results in the disappearance of Major—de Coverly, one of his allies within the command structure on Pianosa. In short, Yossarian is not only a threat to himself, but also harmful to the health and safety of his comrades and detrimental to the war itself.
3.5 Nazi Bureaucracy
It has already briefly been argued above that there is a potential for evil present in bureaucratic systems. To highlight this possibility of evil some examples from the bureaucracy within the Nazi regime will be given first, before the portrayal of the military bureaucracy in the novel will be discussed. It will be argued that bureaucracy and the bureaucrats within the Nazi regime and within the SS bureaucratic system were of vital importance for Hitler’s Final Solution, the extermination of the Jewish people.
Rosemary O’Kane, in her article “Modernity, the Holocaust and Politics,” argues that there were underlying conditions which made the Holocaust in the Second World War possible. She argues that “[t]hese conditions are the existence of a modern rational bureaucracy, the availability of modern science and technology, the rational, logical approach to problem-solving which, accompanying both these phenomena, permeates modern society and lastly the state’s centralization of coercion” (44). She continues to argue that it is these conditions that exist within all modern societies that give these societies the potential to commit great atrocities, such as ‘modern genocide.’ Baumann posits that ‘modern genocide’ is different from ‘normal genocide’ because it serves a purpose, and that the victims are made to work to make the genocide possible. He argues that the Holocaust was “a product of routine bureaucratic procedures: means–ends calculus, budget balancing, universal rule application” (quoted in O’Kane, 44). O’Kane further argues that the whole operation was to make Germany free of Jews, and that this was orchestrated by the SS Central Security Office. The operation of the Final Solution could not have been done without willing participants, the bureaucrats. It is the bureaucrats that put in motion the means for the Final Solution to be made possible. Through the splitting of tasks distance is created between the victims and the perpetrators, which effectively gave the bureaucrats a way of avoiding moral responsibility since they worked only on a small part of the entire operation and thus, it is argued, did not know what the end-goal of their joint operation was. The blame is placed with the higher-ups, who split the tasks among subordinates and used secrecy as their main tool.
