Summary — Chapter 27: Nurse Duckett
The next morning, while Nurse Duckett is smoothing the
sheets at the foot of his bed, Yossarian thrusts his hand up her
skirt. She shrieks and rushes away, and Dunbar grabs her bosom from
behind. When a furious doctor finally rescues her, Yossarian tries
to plead insanity—he says that he has a recurring dream about a
fish. He is assigned an appointment with Major Sanderson, the hospital
psychiatrist. Sanderson, however, is more interested in discussing
his own problems than Yossarian’s. Yossarian’s friends visit him
in the hospital, Dobbs again offers to kill Colonel Cathcart, and,
finally, after Yossarian admits that he thinks that people are trying
to kill him and that he has not adjusted to the war, Major Sanderson decides
that Yossarian really is crazy and should be sent home. But, because
of the identity mix-up perpetrated by Yossarian and Dunbar earlier
in their hospital stay, there is a mistake, and A. Fortiori is sent
home instead. Furious, Yossarian goes to see Doc Daneeka, but Doc
Daneeka will not ground Yossarian for his insanity, rhetorically asking
who would fight if all the crazy men got sent home.
Summary – Chapter 28: Dobbs
Yossarian goes to see Dobbs and tells him to go ahead
and kill Colonel Cathcart. But Dobbs has finished his sixty missions
and is waiting to be sent home; he no longer has a reason to kill
Colonel Cathcart. When Yossarian says that Colonel Cathcart will
simply raise the number of missions again, Dobbs says that he will
wait and see but that perhaps Orr would help Yossarian kill the
colonel. Orr crashed his plane again while Yossarian was in the
hospital and was fished out of the ocean—none of the life jackets
in his plane worked because Milo took out the carbon dioxide tanks
to use for making ice cream sodas. Now, Orr is tinkering with the
stove that he is trying to build in his and Yossarian’s tent, and
he suggests that Yossarian try flying a mission with him for practice
in case he ever has to make a crash landing. Yossarian broods about
the rumored second mission to Bologna. Orr is making noise and irritating
him, and Yossarian imagines killing him, which Yossarian finds a
relaxing thought. They talk about women—Orr says they do not like
Yossarian, and Yossarian replies that they are crazy. Orr tells
Yossarian that he knows Yossarian has asked not to fly with him,
and he offers to tell Yossarian why a naked girl was hitting him
with her shoe outside Nately’s whore’s little sister’s room in Rome.
Yossarian laughingly declines. The next time Orr flies a mission,
he again crashes his plane into the ocean. This time, his survival
raft drifts away from the others and he disappears.
Summary — Chapter 29: Peckem
The men are dismayed when they learn that General Peckem
has transferred Scheisskopf, now a colonel, to his staff. Peckem
is pleased because he thinks the move will increase his strength
compared to that of his rival, General Dreedle. Colonel Scheisskopf
is dismayed by the news that he cannot bring his wife along and
that he will no longer be able to conduct parades every afternoon. Scheisskopf
immediately irritates his colleagues in Group Headquarters, and
Peckem takes him along for an inspection of Colonel Cathcart’s squadron
briefing. At the preliminary briefing, the men are displeased to
learn that they will be bombing an undefended village into rubble;
they don’t know that the only purpose of the missions is to impress
General Peckem with the clean aerial photography enabled by their
bomb patterns. When Peckem and Scheisskopf arrive, Cathcart becomes
angry that another colonel has appeared to rival him. He gives the
briefing himself, and, though he feels shaky and lacks confidence,
he makes it through and congratulates himself on a job well done
under pressure.
Summary — Chapter 30: Dunbar
On the bombing run, Yossarian has a flashback to the mission
during which Snowden died, and he panics. When McWatt starts pulling
daredevil stunts, he threatens to kill McWatt if he does not follow
orders. He is worried that McWatt will hold a grudge, but, after
the mission, McWatt seems concerned only about Yossarian’s health.
Yossarian has begun seeing Nurse Duckett, and he enjoys making love
to her on the beach. Sometimes, while they sit looking at the ocean,
Yossarian thinks about all the people who have died underwater,
including Orr and Clevinger. One day, McWatt is buzzing the beach
in his plane as a joke, when he accidentally flies too low and the
propeller slices Kid Sampson in half. Kid Sampson’s body splatters
all over the beach. Back at the base, everyone is occupied with
the disaster; McWatt, meanwhile, does not land his plane but keeps
flying higher and higher. Yossarian runs down the runway yelling
at McWatt to come down, but he knows what McWatt is going to do.
McWatt crashes his plane into the side of a mountain, killing himself.
Colonel Cathcart is so upset that he raises the number of missions
to sixty-five.
Summary — Chapter 31: Mrs. Daneeka
When Colonel Cathcart learns that Doc Daneeka was also
killed in the crash, he raises the number of missions to seventy.
Actually, Doc Daneeka was not killed in the crash, but the records—which Doc Daneeka,
hating to fly, bribed Yossarian to alter—maintain that the doctor
was in the plane with McWatt, collecting some flight time. Doc Daneeka
is surprised to hear that he is dead, and his wife in America, who
receives a letter to that effect from the military, is shattered.
Heroically, she is cheered to learn that she will be receiving a
number of monthly payments from various military departments for
the rest of her life, as well as sizable life insurance payments
from her husband’s insurance company. Husbands of her friends begin
to flirt with her, and she dyes her hair.
In Pianosa, Doc Daneeka is ostracized by the men, who
blame him for the increased number of missions they are required
to fly. He is no longer allowed to practice medicine and realizes
that, in one sense, he really is dead. He sends a passionate letter
to his wife, begging her to alert the authorities that he is still
alive. She considers the possibility, but after receiving a form
letter from Colonel Cathcart expressing regret over her husband’s
death, she moves her children to Lansing, Michigan, and leaves no
forwarding address.
