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To anyone who likes novels that talk about people rather than an actually story will like Catch-22 because this is not like your typical war novel, this is a story of a group of men trying to survive the casualties of war on and off the battlefield. Each character has their own chapter and in each chapter we are given a little backstory on these characters, with that you begin to see them more like people rather words on a page. You feel like you know them, it creates more investment into the characters and the book. I found myself many times when I couldn’t put the book down because I wanted to see what happened or what caused the characters to be a certain way.

This novel talks bout war from a different aspect and rather talking about then fighting and the war itself, it talks to you about the people and you get to know the stories of people fighting on the front lines, some of these people never get there stories told. But Heller has done a fantastic job of creating an interesting and real story without having to talk about the war itself but rather the people fighting in the war. Most of the book doesn’t even talk about fighting or a mission and to most that would make the book seem boring because I believe that this book has no real story arc, it doesn’t follow the plot diagram. But the stories you hear of the people and the passion Heller has for what he is writing trumps all of that, hands down.

Catch-22 and the character of Yossarian both resemble something about Heller, he was also an Air Force bombardier during World War II. Heller himself flew 60 missions when he was in the Air Force, he uses this book to tell us about his time in the Air Force and the kinds of people he met while he was there. This gives his book more creditability because he actually knew what it was like to fight on the front lines and what goes through the minds of men in the military.

We can assume that he begins to tell us stories of the men he met while in the military and of the things he experienced while in the Air Force. It can be inferred that the character of John Yossarian can be Heller talking about himself, as Yossarian is really the only character we see throughout the whole book and the words Heller used to describe the situations and the people around him is very personal and vivid as of he lived it himself, maybe he did. The men that Heller talks about are men of all different backgrounds and states of mind, rather than give a superficial view of these characters he gives us some back story to these characters as if he knew them personally and he wants us to get to know them personally. He wants us to see these characters as real people rather than as words on a page.

Rather than give us some made up story, Heller gives a real story of war and it is really like to experience war up close and personal. His characters are made-up but because of his background we can assume that these stories are actually real war stories and are about real people. Heller wanted to give us a completely real and authentic depiction of what it is like to fight in war and what war does to men and how especially because they are drafted how many men don’t want to be there and how many are trying to get home.

Yossarian gets shot

Yossarian was flying a mission like he has about fifty times before. But this time was different; they flew into antiaircraft fire while trying to bomb the guns firing at them, Yossarian all of a sudden feels something we covering his uniform. He looks down and sees blood, he had been shot by one of the guns down on land, he has never been shot before, he tries to get help from his pilot shouting at him, ” ‘ Aarfy, help me, ‘ he pleaded, almost weeping. ‘I’m hit! I’m hit’ “(Heller 289)! Aarfy doesn’t like Yossarian so every time Yossarian tires to tell Aarfy something he pretends that he doesn’t hear him. “Aarfy grinned again and shrugged amiably. ‘I can’t hear you,’ he said”(Heller 289). He tries and tries to get Aarfy to help him but it is fruitless because Aarfy just leaves him to die, Yossarian passes out from blood loss before they get back yo camp.

When Yossarian wakes up he is getting his leg stitched up by McWatt before taking him to the medical tent. Everyone wasn’t sure that Yossarian was conscious or even going to make it because he had lost so much blood. Nately was the most upset about Yossarian getting hurt because he felt the closet to him. “Nately’s at the controls. The poor kid almost started bawling when he heard you were hit. He still thinks you’re dead”(Heller 290). After this Yossarian actually get sent to the hospital for a legitimate reason, he still tries to mess around and do stupid things in the hospital, like trading places with other patients in the hospital to mess with the nurses. Him and Dunbar are messing with Nurse Duckett and actually being really disrespectful by groping her and tossing her between the two men. Yossarian said he is trying to “help her out” and also satiate his own wants and needs.

Yossarian gets sent to the hospital therapist about dreams that he has been having, which are actually Dunbar’s dreams. As he talks to the therapist he soon being to realize that if he comes up with some crazy, messed up enough dreams that he might get to go home. So he asked around for the weirdest, craziest, and most disturbing dreams from all the other patients to try and get grounded. Yossarian and Major Sanderson, the therapist, get into a huge fight about who Yossarian “thinks” he is because Sanderson believes he is someone else because of when he decided to switch hospital beds with someone else. ” ‘ I’m not Fortiori, sir, ‘he said timidly. ‘I’m Yossarian’ “(Heller 298). they continue to argue about this and once Yossarian tells Sanderson that the dreams aren’t his but instead they are Dunbar’s it get even worse. To the point to where the therapist thinks that Yossarian has a split personality ” ‘ It’s not the dream, Dunbar,’ Yossarian explained. ‘ He likes your dream. It’s my personality. He thinks it’s split’ “(Heller 302). With this Yossarian thinks he will be grounded because he is being classified as crazy by a “doctor” , he is beyond excited abut the idea of going home only to find himself back o the battlefield once he fells better.

He talks to Doc Deenka, who is worried about the fact tat the Allies are advancing on the Germans. Yossarian is confused by this, until Deenka explains that if they win the war in Germany, they all get sent to the Pacific to fight the Japanese. This even of Yossarian getting shot is critical to the story because, he had yet to be actually injured throughout the book, but wanted the war to be over and to defeat the Germans as soon as possible to go home. But now he finds out that if they win, he ends up fighting somewhere much worse. Now what does he do? Does he try to go back to the hospital again? Does he purposely screw up his missions to not fight the Japanese? Or does he decide the only way to stop the number of missions from raising is to kill Colonel Cathcart?

” Memorial Day for the War Dead”

Catch-22 is similar to war novels in many ways but some things to me stand out as very different, the characters themselves talk openly about how people are expendable. Condolence letters tend to take a backseat on the to-do list because, so many have to be sent out but the squadron can’t just stop what its doing to write letters for a family. From my past readings of war books most of them elude to this idea of people being expendable but don’t talk about to directly. The poem “Memorial Day for the War Dead” by Yehuda Amichai talks about everyone is grieving for some one different whether it is a solider who died in combat or civilian casualties.

“Children with a grief not their own march slowly, like stepping over broken glass”(Amicahi lines 16-17). A parade for the war dead is going through town, the children do not know who died or what happened or why they are marching. They just know that they are being told to march so they do. The war killed more than those on the battlefield, it also killed families such as “A man whose son died in the war walks in the street like a woman with a dead embryo in her womb”(Amichai lines 31-31). Since not everyone who died can be honored because most of the people who died were just foot soldiers fighting on the front lines. Most “war heroes” only get remembered if they lead a special mission or obtain a critical victory. Nobody ever remembers the little guys fighting on the front lines physically risking their lives.

Most of the “war heroes” we learn about are generals who didn’t risk their lives to save us. They were the ones in a tent deciding how to attack an enemy squadron. ” and sacrifice and mourning on one day for easy, convenient memory”(Amichai lines 5-6), the government just lumps all the loses into one day to make themselves feel better because this way they honored everyone who died rather than to find a way to help their families deal with their loses. Catch-22 kind of gives this idea of getting to know all the people laying there lives down for their country, we see individual characters and how they play into the story. We get to see the people on the front lines fighting for us rather than the people who tell them what to do and get all the credit for what others are doing and fighting for. Heller gives a look into what it is like fighting on the front lines for your country, you have many different people that he shows us; ones that want to be their fighting, ones that would rather die than fight another day, and ones that are crazy enough to want to fly missions. He shows us that the war is even more cruel than we ever imagined it could be.

“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.

My name is Gwyn, I am a student at Belton High School, who is doing a blog project for school about the book Catch-22.

The purpose of my blog is to give people a place to discuss the plot, the characters, the setting and the overall themes of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.

I am very excited to be able to hear the opinions of others about this amazing book, and where our discussions may lead us. I am ready for the many hours we will spend talking about what we think and learning what different ideas others have. I want to hear all the ideas that you guys have to get a better understanding of the book, see there book for its entirety, and see all the different ways to interpret the book to get a full understanding of what Catch-22 is really about.

When I originally started this book I did it because I have always wanted to read it but when I did start to read it, it felt like a little bit of a let down. The more I read the more I realized that my initial gut feeling was right and this was beginning to become a really great book. So far this has become one of the best books I have ever read and I hope that it continues to be one of my favorite books.