Catch 22

“Joseph Heller, who penned “Catch-22,” does not understand anything about the simplicity of writing a novel. This narrative has no plot, and there is very little use of basic literary elements such as symbolism and theme. Frankly, I was appalled with its predictable insipidness.” Thus said noted critic I.M. Dense in his monthly book review. I was distraught when I read this review and took it upon myself to devise my own review of “Catch-22.”

In Dense’s review he states that there is no theme to the story, that it is just a random hodgepodge of words that happened to work well together. He is surely mistaken. One of the more interesting themes of the novel is the Achilles' heel of language. In the first chapter of Catch-22, we see Yossarian deleting words at random from the letters that he is required to censor while he is in the hospital. Initially, this act seems terrible. The letters are the men’s only way of communicating with loved ones at home, and Yossarian is destroying that line of communication. As we learn more about Yossarian’s world, however, we see that the military bureaucracy has seized the communicative power out of language. As Snowden dies in the back of the plane, all that Yossarian can think of to say is “there, there,” over and over, as if no other words would work well enough. Faced with the realities of death and the absurdity of its circumstances, language seems unable to communicate any sort of reassurance.

While language has no power to comfort in the novel, it does have the power to circumvent logic and trap the squadron in an inescapable prison of bureaucracy – trap them in a Catch 22. Catch-22 itself is nothing but a bunch of words strung together to circumvent logic and keep Yossarian flying