Character Relationships

“Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.”

— Joseph Heller,Catch-22 (83)

Major Major was bullied a lot as a child’s because of his name and his “sickly resemblance to Henry Fonda” which gave way to many practical jokes “throughout his joyless life”. Him being shy and kind of hermit, was very surprising considering his father because, he was very obnoxious and brash. Major’s father “was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age.” Since he was an alfalfa farmer, he believed that you reap what you sow, and “[God] wouldn’t have given us two good hands to take it with”(Heller 83).

Major was always very unimpressive, that he actually impressed people “by how unimpressive he was”. This made him get the job of squadron commander even more shocking because, he was nothing special, even in the army he was average at best. Growing up in the environment that Major Major did and reading about the kind of annoying, cocky, outlandish man his father was, it came as a real surprise to me to read about such a quiet character(Heller 83).

The juxtaposition of Major relationship with his father mirrors that of the one he has in the army, in the sense that most military men are very blunt and outgoing, sleeping with any women they can find, and some no longer care whether or not they live or die. Since his promotion to major, many of the soldiers who becoming his friends, now treat him like that where never friends to begin with. Major Major is doing everything he can to avoid interacting with the other soldiers, he doesn’t go to whore houses, and he is trying to stay out of combat as much as possible. I believe that Major’s father would have probably fit in better with the men in Major’s squadron because, his personality is more like that of military men.