Literature Analysis 1

Catch 22

1. This story did not follow the typical plot line and was jumps of flashbacks to present time, leaving the story line messy, yet real.  The beginning of the story introduces the main characters and their feelings on war, whether its Yossarian's view of hating or the Texan's of it being the best thing ever. The story is based around the conflict of Yossarian wanting to leave the war, but the minimum mission count to leave keeps getting raised to keep the pilots there.  The army uses their dogmatic rules to justify what they order.  Yossarian tries to find the loopholes, but once he finds it the close it off before he can get away. As the story progress Yossarian neglects his duty and flees from battle to avoid getting killed.  He once pretends to have a broken radio and lands away from the bombing site and doesn't bomb anyone.  His friends begin to get killed on missions increasing his desire to get out before he suffers the same fate.  Colonel Cathcart tells Yossarian he will be let free to go home if he does not report him increasing the minimum mission requirements for leave, this leave Yossarian stuck morally of helping himself and leaving his squadron or staying.  When he finds out his friend Orr actually faked his death to escape and flee to Sweden, upon hearing this, Yossarian gets out of there to go join his friend in Sweden.  

2. The Catch 22 is a ruling saying pilots will be grounded if they are crazy, but declaring your crazy proves you sane.  This makes it impossible to escape the army unless you complete your number of mission, that they increase continuously, or ignore it completely.  This follows the theme that everything is controlled by a higher power that you can't prevent, but only learn to live with.  

3. Heller writes this almost as a satirical to war, because he uses humor to depict a serious issue with the toll of war on soldiers.  

"It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead."

This explains how Yossarian believes the war and its winners are pointless because in the end every man who died will not have truly won, but lost the true war of life.

"They were the most depressing group of people Yossarian had ever been with. They were always in high spirits. They laughed at everything."

They were always to happy that it brought Yossarian's spirits down due to the fact he felt like he was the only one who still remembered what was going on out there.

"I may outrank you, sit, but you’re still my commanding officer."

The army had many confusing rulings and procedures that end up with complications and mishaps, this is one of them because they may outrank the other, but do to army procedures he is actually under the lower ranked officer.

4. Situational Irony

"Clevinger was a genius... a Harvard undergraduate... [going] far in the academic world... In short, he was a dope" (p. 68)

Dramatic Irony
"Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice. The doctors were puzzled by the fact that it wasn't quite jaundice" (p. 7)

Allusion
"John Milton is a sadist" (p.97)

Alliteration

"If the colonel says we have to fly fifty-five missions, we have to fly them" (p. 65)

Foreshadowing

"Do you remember... that time in Rome when that girl who can't stand you kept hitting me over and over the head with the heel of her shoe? Do you want to know why she was hitting me?" (p. 25)

Paradox

"If he flew [planes] he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. " (p.46)

Verbal Irony

"I don't have nightmares" (p. 54)

 Symbolism

"He never sends anyone home, anyway. He just keeps them waiting around waiting for rotation orders until he doesn't haven enough men left for the crews, and then raises the number of missions and throws them all back on combat status. He's been doing that ever since he got here" (p.102)

Motif

"I don't want to fly milk runs" (p.103)

Repetition

 “Major Major Major Major” (p. 82)

Characterization

1.Indirect Characterization: We are told in the beginning of the book, Yossarian's feelings on the war and the people around him.  You learn how he hates being in the war and only wants to get out alive, "I’m not running away from my responsibilities. I’m running to them. There’s nothing negative about running away to save my life.”     Dunbar is also directly characterized through his feelings and thoughts we get to know him, we find he is very similar to Yossarian in the way he acts and feels,   "Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?" Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. "This long." He snapped his fingers. "A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you're an old man." Heller uses this approach so you feel connected to these characters.

Direct Characterization: Heller uses indirect characterization so you learn straight forward what the character is like compared to the other characters. The Texan is one of the first characters you meet this way  We learn he is a patriotic soldier, but he his actions make everyone leave they ward because they were annoyed by his presence, "The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likeable. In three days no one could stand him."  Even the man in the white gauze is characterized in a few short sentences, "The soldier in white was encased from head to toe in plaster and gauze."

2.  Heller's way of writing doesn't change as he moves from character to character, using vivid imagery to help us picture the old and new characters in our minds.  An example of Heller's imagery would be, "Colonel Cargill, General Peckem's troubleshooter, was a forceful, ruddy man. Before the war he had been an alert, hard-hitting, aggressive marketing executive. He was a very bad marketing executive. Colonel Cargill was so awful a marketing executive that his services were much sought after by firms eager to establish losses for tax purposes. Throughout the civilized world, from Battery Park to Fulton Street, he was known as a dependable man for a fast tax write-off. His prices were high, for failure often did not come easily. He had to start at the top and work his way down, and with sympathetic friends in Washington, losing money was no simple matter. It took months of hard work and careful misplanning. A person misplaced, disorganized, miscalculated, overlooked everything and opened every loophole, and just when he thought he had it made, the government gave him a lake or a forest or an oilfield and spoiled everything. Even with such handicaps, Colonel Cargill could be relied on to run the most prosperous enterprise into the ground. He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody."

3. Yossarian is a dynamic, round character.  From the beginning of the story he is trying to find ways to keep him from war such as staying in the hospital, but in the end he is faced with the decision to leave the army and let everyone suffer for his choice or stay.  He decides to stay so people don't face the consequence of his choice even though he leaves on his own in the end.

4. After reading the book, I feel like I have met a new group of friends that no one else has, because through Heller's figurative language I was able to picture myself there with them in many scenes.

The middle-aged big shots would not let Nately's whore leave until they made her say uncle.
"Say Uncle," they said to her.
"Uncle," she said.
"No, no. Say uncle."
"Uncle," she said.
"She still doesn't understand."
"You still don't understand, do you? We can't really make you say uncle unless you don't want to say uncle. Don't you see? Don't say uncle when I tell you to say uncle. Okay? Say uncle."
"Uncle," she said.
"No, don't say uncle. Say uncle."
She didn't say uncle.
"That's good!"
"That's very good."
"It's a start. Now say uncle."
"Uncle," she said.