catch 22 :: week 1

for the month of june, i am reading catch-22.  the timeline is a little off. due to the students finishing the broadcasting class, i missed the first week entirely. then due to the paradoxical nature of the arguments, tongue twisters and other complexities of this deep novel, 20 pages in half an hour is not very feasible. thus, i will read past 9:00 (as late as 9:30) on most days and will carry over in july. hopefully finish up before KEOL fest.  here is a look back at the first week to get caught up. 

Paradox built upon paradox is the novel of Catch 22.  It is a satire combining the dehumanization of war with a survival impulse.  The book carries paradoxical arguments to the extreme, with rediculous conclusions.  The main point of the novel is to show what happens when the mission of war is determined by people who are not fighting the war.  It is all about waqr and bureacracy. Most frustratingly for everyone involved is the colonal raising of the number of required missions every time the troops get close to finishing their tour of duty. The irony is that the generals are only concerned with getting promotions, while the troops are only concerned with getting home. Neither side appears to care with political or ethical matters.  The text is a disjointed maze of characters and events and tongue twisters.  I cannot explain it adequately, but below is a chapter by chapter review of what was read last week.

Chapter 1  "The Texan"
    Yossarian and Dunbar are faking sickness to remain hospitalized for the duration of the war.  Or at least that was their plan until the Texan is admitted.  The Texan is a very normal fellow, who drives everyone crazy and out of the hospital, back to war.

Chapter 2  "Clevinger"   

    Clevinger is a captain in Yossarian's squadron, who get frustrated with Yossarian’s argument that people are trying to kill him. Yossarian’s theory is that people are trying to kill him because people that don't know him are shooting cannons at his plane. Clevinger thinks Yossarian is crazy because they're trying to kill everyone, but Yossarian is not convinced.    After a fantastic meal prepared by Milo, Yossarian goes to Doc Danneka, who tells Yossairan the colonel wants 50 missions for discharge.  Yossarian, however, only has 44 misions.

Chapter 3 "Havermeyer"
    Yossarian's tentmate Orr obsesses with mechanical engineering devices that he constructs in their tent, which puts Yossarian consistently on edge that he will blow something up.  Orr further annoys Yossarian with stories about why he walked around with crab apples in his cheeks and a standoff ensues.  Orr had been beat over the head by Nately's whore's kid sister creating a raging scene in a whorehouse that Yossarian never understood, but dreaded having to be subjected to the memory of such tomfoolery.       General Dreedle was annoyed by General Pekem's orders, such as having all the tents in all the European theatre face the Washington Monument.  Ex-PFC Wintergreen, who is in charge of mail, throws away all correspondence by General Pekem, which makes General Dreedle succeed in pushing his agenda, which invariably causes the number of missions to be raised to 50 to qualify for discharge.
     Yossarian is now living beside a dead man who has his gun stolen by Havermeyer.  Havermeyer then uses the gun to shoot field mice in his tent at night. If that is not irritating enough to the men, Havermeyer also leads his formations straight and narrow, giving German gunners all the time necessary to blow them out of the sky.  Havermeyer would never return from a mission until absolutely sure the target had been hit and Yossarian did not care at all whether any targets had been hit.  The chapter ends with Hungry Joe getting pissed at Havermeyer for shooting the mice and charges his tent in the middle of the night all guns blazing, bringing the entire thing down with Hungry Joe psychotically babbling as they pull him from a muddied mess.

Chapter 4 "Doc Daneeka"
    Hungry Joe is crazy, so Yossarian decides to help him out, but Hungry Joe won’t listen because he thinks Yossarian is crazy.  Doc Daneeka naturally has worse problems than either of them, due to losing his lucrative medical practice when drafted into the war.     Yossarian disrupts meetings by asking unanswerable questions because he is a collector of good questions. This causes Colonel Cathcart and Lieutenant Colonel Korn to make a rule that the only people who could ask questions were the people who never did.  They also approve a skeet-shooting range at which Yossarian resigns himself to failure - of skeet shooting and gambling. He laments he will never be able to hit a target or make money.  Dunbar, however, shoots skeet frequently because he hates it and believes that boring or uncomfortable activities makes time pass slower, thereby lengthening his life. Then, ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen starts a panic among the officers in Rome by telephoning them and saying only, “T. S. Eliot.”  Although he intends it as a response to a general memo from a colonel saying that it would be hard to name a poet who makes any money, General Peckem assumes that it constitute a coded message and suffers great anxiety as a result.

Chpater 5 "Chief White Halfoat"
    Doc Daneeka shares his tent with an alcoholic Native American named Chief White Halfoat. The chief discusses his family's divinity with Yossarian.  A major oil deposit happened to be located everywhere his family settled, such that they never could get any sleep for being constantly kicked off their land by prospectors. It got so bad that oil companies would kick them off everytime they decided to settle on the land and even waited for them at every turn, beckoning them to settle on any given piece of land and kick them off before they even stopped.      This chapter is the genesis of the title, the biggest conundrum the entire book has to offer.  Catch 22 specifies that a concern for one’s own safety is the process of a rational mind.  Yossarian is mostly concerned with being grounded and getting out of the war. He asks Doc if being crazy is enough reason. It would be enough reason and Yossarian certainly is crazy.  However, there is a rule that in order to be grounded for insanity a pilot must first ask to be grounded. But if a pilot asks to be grounded they must be sane, because it is quite rational to not want to fly bombing missions. Yossarian is impressed and confused at the dilemma, and decides to believe Doc Daneeka.      Another catch is that Yossarian detests his position in the nose of the plane. He is separated from the escape hatch by a passage just wide enough for him to squeeze through, but not with his parachute. Yossarian is always terrified for his life, and the chapter ends with him pleading with the pilot, McWatt, to avoid antiaircraft fire remembering the mission where Snowden died.

Chapter 6 "Hungry Joe"     

      Hungry Joe completes his fifty missions and is awaiting orders to be sent home. But Hungry Joe can't get anything right, not even taking pictures of girls, though he used to be a photographer for Life magazine.  Hungry Joe always accepts the fact that he has to return to duty.  He hears noises in his head and screams in his sleep all night keeping everyone else awake, while denying he has nightmares. Hungry Joe is actually most at ease when things are going worst.
     Orr loses to Appleby in a game of ping pong and then attacks him. A bigger fight breaks out, in which Chief White Halfoat punches Colonel Moodus in the nose. General Dreedle is happy because Colonel Moodus is his cousin-in-law that he can’t stand, so he has Chief While Halfoat punch Moodus in the nose repeatedly.  Chief White Halfoat then threatens his tentmate, Flume, that he will slit his throat from ear to ear.  It’s all just a drunken joke, but Flume is scared into staying awake all night, or at least he dreams he is awake.      Yossarian asks ex-PFC Wintergreen if it is correct that only forty missions are required to satisfy the Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters (ten less than Colonel Cathcart requires). Yossarian is thrilled that is true, because he is finished and can go home. However, Wintergreen springs another catch on him, that anyone must do whatever one's commanding officer tells him, no matter what the Air Force says. Furthermore, Yossarian is not pleased to learn that that the colonel has now raised the number of required missions to fifty-five.

Chapter 7 "McWatt"

     McWatt, Yossarian's pilot, is the craziest man in Pianosa because he is perfectly sane and still does not mind the war.  The chapter, however, focuses more on how Milo, the mess hall officer, uses McWatt as a go-between to a fruit trading scheme that will allow him to retain a profit margin even with his strict morals.      

      Milo always wants to serve the best meals and he is duly upset to find out that Colonel Snark put soap in the men's sweet potatoes to prove that they have no sense of taste.  Even though the men get diarrhea, they still ask for more potatoes.  Milo finds out Doc Daneeka has written a letter saying Yossarian should get all the fruit he asks for because he has a liver condition.  Milo is worried about losing profits on his fruit and also finds out that Yossarian doesn't actually have a liver condition.  Instead of eating the fruit, Yossarian gives it to anybody who wants it.  Milo has a strict set of morals, but at the same time his morals require him to charge the highest prices possible. But he will not borrow a package of pitted dates from the mess hall because they're government property.  So, he gets around this by borrowing the same package of pitted dates from Yossarian and trades it as McWatt's interest to a thief with a sweet tooth who stole McWatt's bed sheet from him that morning and thereby manages get both the dates and bed sheet back. Milo keeps a quarter of the bed sheet "for the syndicate" and gives half the bed sheet back to McWatt and a quarter of it to Yossarian along with the dates.  Milo also has no issues with taking goods by force from a foreign trader who doesn't speak English.

Chapter 8 "Lieutenant Scheisskopf"
     Lieutenant Scheisskopf is obsessed with winning parade competitions every weekend for silly prizes. He is so busy preparing for the parades that he doesn't notice his wife cheating on him with any man who wants her, including Yossarian, who sleeps with her every week, even though he's in love her friend Doris Duz. When Doris does not like him, Yossarian takes his frustration out by having sex with Mrs. Scheisskopf.       

     Lieutenant Scheisskopf appoints his own officers instead of letting the men elect them, much to Clevinger's chagrin. Clevinger is a smart Harvard graduate, but has no courage. He and Yossarian had trained together in cadet school.  Against Yossarian's advice, Clevinger suggests that Scheisskopf let his men elect their own officers. Scheisskopf takes the advice and starts winning all the parades.  He then accuses Clevinger of conspiracy to overthrow the officers and puts him on trial before the Action Board, which is dominated by an irrational, bloated colonel who constantly threatens to tear Clevinger limb from limb.  The Action Board makes Clevinger say contradictory things and he is sentenced to fifty-seven tours as punishment.  There is something to the story about fear and hatred from him own countrymen that are creating more of a war on him than the enemy.

Chapter 9  "Major Major Major Major"

      Major Major has no friends because of his strange name. And the story behind it was just as strange with his father playing a joke on his mother, which kills his mother.  Major Major believed his name was Caleb Major and finding out his real name devastates him and alienates him from all his friends.  In school, he wanted to major in English history, but is tormented because it is not American History, so he switches to American Literature.  Major Major is very obedient, always doing what people tell him. Everyone hates him for being good and virtuous and they all assume he has become successful because he looks like Henry Fonda. In fact, they think he is successful because other people actually think he is Henry Fonda.  However, it was an IBM machine with a sense of humor that promotes him to the status of Major.
     When Major Major is shipped overseas, his life suddenly improves. He becomes accepted by other men while playing basketball.  Then, Colonel Cathcart ruins his life further by promoting Major Major to squadron commander. Everyone resents Major Major for his elevated rank. They stop speaking to him and beat him to a bloody pulp while he is wearing a disguise, but he does not take the disguise off because he doesn’t want the men to know that he knows that they are beating their squadron commander.         

       Major Major alleviates his boredom of paperwork by signing "Washington Irving." This stops the cycle of papers comtinually coming back to him for signatures. Two C.I.D. men come looking for Washington Irving and Major Major lies to both of them and they suspect each other of being Washington Irving.       Major Major gives all his subordinates orders that he will see nobody in his office or that no one will ever see him, period, except Yossarian who manages to get an interview with him by literally pouncing on him to request being sent home. The chapter ends with Major Major rationalizing why he must not ever tell anyone there is nothing he can do, because it implies that he would do something if he could, until he finally tells Yossarian there is nothing he can do to help.