Thank you Chairman Kaga!

(Skip this part, it’s mostly pointless)

Everybody hates bureaucracy, but Heller’s portrayal of upper echelon military leadership is beyond anything I could have imagined. It is the most obvious irony in the book. In Catch 22, everyone and anyone that occupies a position of significant responsibility is incompetent, vain and irresponsible. It’s relentless. The entire chain of command is just ridiculous. It is extremely unsettling to think of a military lead by these characters. They spend most of the time fighting themselves, not the Axis. Even the missions detailed in the book are undertaken only to wage war against other commanding officers. Forget the Nazis.

This irony is maximized in the case of Yossarian’s moving of the bomb line. The chain of information is inverted and the commanders learn of the apparent capture of Bologna through their subordinates. Yossarian’s attempts to disrupt the “war effort” are another point of interest in the book. He launches a guerilla war against the military establishment, which is in turn fighting amongst itself and trying to fight the Axis as well.

I love how Yossarian’s crazy and sane at the same time. He is perhaps the craziest soldier ever imagined, however he is one of the most clearheaded characters in the book. He cuts through the attitude of patriotic and wartime rationalization that affects most of the other soldiers and focuses upon the basic truth that holds true for every individual soldier in the field. They are trying to kill me. He is not affected by the team mentality that soldiers are trained think about. Yossarian concerns himself only with the most necessary condition of life…survival.

(This part is way better)

I don’t know. Usually you can identify one main idea that a text addresses. One main question with which it deals. Like a good experiment, it identifies and explores this question, discovering the nature and consequences of the question itself. But in this book, I see more than that. It addresses so many of these issues. And I think the structure of the book allows this. Each section (or in some cases chapter) of the book addresses a different question.

Many of these issues are fundamental questions about one’s humanity, nationality and existence. This book examines question from patriotism to leadership to reward and punishment to meaning and definition of life. I think this is what confuses us while reading Catch 22. Very nearly every chapter examines a different aspect of the (very cliché) human condition and the role of a modern human being in society. The book is not pointless or rambling as some (I also fell prey to this misunderstanding at first) think.

It is not meaningless; it’s comprehensive. It is an encyclopedia of human concern. Like a good recipe, the book is written in the perfect way to achieve this effect. Heller poses many questions, so he needs many characters. In fact, it needs a whole army of them, so that is what he gets. You need time to develop a single idea. Heller briefly examines many ideas, so he doesn’t need time. He doesn’t need to maintain a structured chronology. He only needs enough time to move characters from point to point and allow events to occur. He doesn’t need his time to connect end to end. He doesn’t need his chronology to dovetail perfectly. He only needs a collection of times that fit within a larger framework where some characters can interact throughout events. He needs a war, so he goes and gets one. Like a philosophical Dr. Pepper, this book has at least 23 of the finest and most ultimate questions known to man, and like Iron Chef Mario Batali himself, Heller fuses his ideas with perfect synergy. This story is truly a delightful mix of universal mysteries and flavors. Mmmm, savory and sweet.