Summary — Chapter 14: Kid Sampson
The squadron finally receives the go-ahead to bomb Bologna,
but by this time Yossarian does not feel like going over the target
even once. He pretends that his plane’s intercom system is broken
and orders his pilot, Kid Sampson, to turn back. They land at the
deserted airfield just before dawn, feeling strangely morose. Yossarian
takes a nap on the beach and wakes up when the planes fly back.
Not a single plane has been hit. Yossarian thinks that cloud cover
must have prevented them from bombing the city and that they will
have to make another attempt, but he is wrong: facing no antiaircraft
fire, the Americans bombed the city without incurring any losses.
Summary — Chapter 15: Piltchard & Wren
Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren ineffectually reprimand
Yossarian and his crew for turning back and inform the men that
since they missed the ammunition dumps the first time, they will
have to bomb Bologna again. Yossarian confidently flies in, assuming
there will be no antiaircraft fire, and he is stunned when shrapnel
begins firing up toward him through the skies. He furiously directs
McWatt into evasive maneuvers and fights with the strangely cheerful
Aarfy until the bombs are dropped. Yossarian does not die—though
many other men in the squadron do—and the plane lands safely. Yossarian
heads immediately for emergency rest leave in Rome.
Summary — Chapter 16: Luciana
Luciana is a beautiful Italian woman whom Yossarian meets
at a bar in Rome. After he buys her dinner and dances with her,
she agrees to sleep with him, but not right then—she will come to
his room the next morning. She does, but then angrily refuses to
sleep with Yossarian until she cleans his room, disgustedly calling
him a pig. Finally, she lets him sleep with her. Afterward, Yossarian
falls in love with her and asks her to marry him. She says she won’t
marry him because he is crazy; she knows he is crazy because no
one in his right mind would marry a girl who was not a virgin. She
tells him about a scar she got when the Americans bombed her town.
Suddenly, Hungry Joe rushes in with his camera, and Yossarian and
Luciana have to get dressed. Laughing, they go outside, where they
part ways. Luciana gives Yossarian her number, telling him that she
expects him to tear it up as soon as she leaves because she thinks that
he is impressed with himself that such a pretty girl would sleep with
him for free. He asks her why on earth he would do such a thing.
As soon as she leaves, though, Yossarian, impressed with himself
that such a pretty girl would sleep with him for free, tears up her
number. Almost immediately he regrets doing so, and, after learning
that Colonel Cathcart has raised the number of missions to forty,
he makes the anguished decision to go straight to the hospital.
Analysis — Chapters 11–16
In this section, the disordered chronology functions as
an instrument for building suspense. The lengthy digression about
the Great Loyalty Oath Crusade interrupts the tense buildup to
the Bologna mission, which occurs shortly before the scene at the
beginning of the novel, when the number of required missions is
still thirty-five. The Great Loyalty Oath Crusade story is ironic
and funny; the Bologna mission is a dismal story told in terms of
endless rain and growing worry. By breaking off the Bologna story
in the middle to tell the exaggerated parable of the Loyalty Oath
Crusade, Heller heightens the sense of uncertainty and anticipation
surrounding the outcome of the Bologna mission. During the description
of the actual bombing run to Bologna, however, Heller devotes a
chapter almost entirely to a single event, without his usual digressions.
This very detailed, vivid account of the attack makes time appear
to move more slowly, trapping the reader in the same drawn-out terror
as the characters. The earnest, straightforward manner in which
the Bologna story is told is a signal that we are meant to take
this episode seriously—that there is nothing funny about this aspect
of war.
Although Catch-22 is
written mostly from the perspective of a third-person narrator who
describes what each of the characters is thinking, we hear mostly
what is happening in Yossarian’s mind, and many of the observations
about the absurdity of the war seem to be his own. So, despite the
fact that each chapter of Catch-22 bears the
name of a character described in that chapter, the narrative generally
returns to Yossarian. A significant departure from this organizational
method occurs in the chapter entitled “Bologna,” however: instead
of operating as a largely humorous description of the nature and
history of one of the novel’s characters, this chapter remains almost
entirely in the present of the story, and Yossarian is forced to confront
his desire to live at the expense of everything else. The chapter
title itself—a place name rather than a person’s name—marks a shift
from a satirical and humorous focus on the unwitting characters
engaged in the war to a serious focus on the present reali-ties
of the war.
