Catch-22

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Author: Joseph Heller
Acquired in: 2020


 
If you are looking for a book that is as insane as the whole World Wars were, Catch-22 is what you need. This is not a conventional World-War-righteous-patriot novel or a World-War-untold-suffering memoir, it’s a macabre depiction of what went on in the heads of countless soldiers during the war.

Captain John Yossarian is an aviator and he is paranoid. To elaborate, "As far as Yossarian could recall... somebody was always hatching a plot to kill him. There were people who cared for him and people who didn't, and those who didn't hated him and were out to get him." Yossarian even begs the camp doctor, Doc Daneeka, to declare him unfit for combat on the grounds on insanity. And now, we meet The Paradox, Catch-22. It specifies that anybody who is mentally unstable can be grounded, he only has to ask. But the catch is that if the person does ask, it shows that he possesses a rational mind because he is concerned for his life and hence cannot be grounded.

Everyone is crazy in the book, the reader might feel. From Milo Minderbender to Captain Aardvaark/Aarfy to Colonel Cathcart, eccentricity has not spared anyone, maybe except the soft-spoken chaplain who is also quite bewildered at how everyone is behaving. The absurdity quotient is sometimes overwhelming, often prompting me to shut the book and stare blankly at the sky to re-orient myself. This happens especially when reading about the maniacal Milo who lets his businessman side rule him to such an extent where he even bombs his own squadron to nail profits on commodities.

The bombing of a defenceless Italian village, the appalling deaths of cadets and the inexplicable disappearance of Clevinger and Dunbar, the rape and murder of an innocent maid by a remorseless Aarfy; the disturbing elements too, have not been neglected. The deaths of fellow aviators like Nately, Kid Sampson, McWatt and especially Snowden, haunt Yossarian and may disconcert a reader.

Does Yossarian live? That’s one hotly debated question regarding the astonishing Assyrian after he paddles off into the ocean, trying to reach the war-neutral Sweden across the Mediterranean Sea. The other is that whether this book should be relegated to the bin or kept among the hallowed books on your shelf. Undoubtedly, this book quite threw me off guard and befuddled me just like it did to everyone, but I vote to Keep.

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