Perhaps most importantly, like many great writers, Heller has his own distinct style and I’m convinced I could pick out his writing just from a few lines. His use of language is sharp and there’s no doubt about the wit of the author. I want to begin by tipping my hat to Heller’s writing style. There are several aspects of the book I found interesting, amusing, and clever, but overall I found myself feeling frustrated by it as a whole and left wondering what all the fuss is about. Having finished Heller’s story, I find that I am in the uncomfortable position of going against the grain when it comes to Catch-22. After reading (and loving) Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five last year, I decided that it was time for another anti-war novel. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to, but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.” Stuck in an impenetrable web of bureaucracy, Yossarian must do whatever it takes to survive the people who are seemingly hell-bent on his death, the people who are supposed to be on his side.Ĭatch-22 is a book that’s been on my ever-expanding ‘To read’ pile for years, and I’ve often heard plenty of praise heaped upon the novel. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he were sane he had to fly them. All he had to do was ask and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. The insane people are the ones who show no concern for their safety and thus fly missions.Īs Heller writes: “There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.
Our protagonist knows that, if a man is deemed insane he no longer has to fly missions, but showing concern for one’s safety in the face of danger is deemed to be rational, and so he is sane and fit to fly. The book’s title, Catch-22, now common parlance, refers to “a problem for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem or by a rule.” Forced to serve under a commander who keeps raising the minimum amount of missions required before a bomber can be sent home, Yossarian is desperate to find a way to no longer have to fly more bombing runs.
Unlike many war novels, Catch-22 doesn’t designate the opposing force as the threat to Yossarian’s life but instead reveals how the maddening rules of war, rank, and command of one’s own side can be just as dangerous as gunfire from the enemy. No one has ever written a book like this.” NO MAJOR SPOILERSĬonsidered by many to be a modern classic, Catch-22 was first published in 1961 by Joseph Heller and serves as a satirical war novel that follows Captain John Yossarian, a bombardier in the United States Air Force stationed in Pianosa during the Second World War. “Blessedly, monstrously, bloatedly, cynically funny and fantastically unique.
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