Analysis — Chapters 27–31
This section works through an increasingly macabre surrealism
that climaxes with the manslaughter of Kid Sampson and suicide of McWatt.
The strange psychological examinations and identity games in the
hospital provide Heller with the opportunity to parody modern psychotherapy,
which he does with scathing cleverness—Major Sanderson’s insistence
on discussing his own late puberty is one of the funniest characterizations
in the novel. It also lends some weight to the idea of insanity
that circulates throughout the novel; the men are always accusing
each other of being crazy, and Yossarian even finds insanity a desirable
trait, because it will get him out of the war—or would, if not for
Catch-22.
Although the novel does not seem to follow a chronological
pattern—being composed primarily of episodes that are memories, flashbacks,
or character descriptions and having very little grasp on what exactly
the current moment is—the climax of these three chapters demonstrates
that the novel as a whole still has a somewhat conventional narrative
shape. That is, the memories and flashbacks that make up the first
two-thirds of the novel lead up to the fatigue and frustration with
war that form the background for the events in these chapters. The
war transitions from a surreal series of events whose absurdity
can be lightly parodied to a reality that is a serious and heavy
weight on Yossarian and his squadron. Furthermore, the events in
these chapters—particularly the two deaths—shift the narrative from
the brilliant parody of the preceding sections into an extremely
dark humor that borders on seriousness. The increasing strain the
war is placing on Yossarian’s psyche is evident in the scene in
which he contemplates murdering Orr and finds the idea a relaxing
one; it is this thought alone that allows him to tolerate his roommate’s
prattling.
Orr’s disappearance and presumed death come as something
of a shock. In fact, one of the most remarkable aspects of Catch-22 is
the way that Heller manages to catch us off guard each time one
of Yossarian’s friends dies. In part, this aspect is a virtue of
the novel’s chronology—with so much jumping forward and backward
in time, it becomes easy to think of the lives of the characters
as existing in a sort of vacuum, without beginning or end. Of course,
such is not the case, and the men’s deaths are sharp reminders that
even in the novel time moves forward and people are fragile. Yossarian
is not in need of such a reminder: he is haunted by the death of
Snowden and reaches a moment of murderous rage toward McWatt shortly
after flashing back to Snowden’s death. Yossarian’s fierce desire
to live makes him seem heroic even in his moments of cowardice.
As he strangles McWatt and yells at him to pull up, it seems only
just for McWatt to obey.
The absurd chapter on the death of Doc Daneeka represents
perhaps the most extreme moment of bureaucratic confusion in the entire
novel. Paperwork has the power to make a living man officially dead,
and the bureaucracy would rather lose the man than try to confront
the forms. Painfully, Mrs. Daneeka becomes complicit in her husband’s
red-tape murder when she decides to take the insurance payments
as a higher authority than his own letter protesting that he is
really alive. Doc Daneeka thus realizes that he is essentially dead
and that death is a matter of paperwork rather than biology. The
soldiers’ powerlessness over their own lives extends even to their
own deaths, which can be forced upon them not only by the shooting
of a gun but also by the fall of a stamp.
