Summary — Chapter 32: Yo-Yo’s Roomies
The cold weather comes, and Kid Sampson’s legs remain
on the beach, since no one will retrieve them. The first things
Yossarian remembers when he wakes up each morning are Kid Sampson’s
legs and Snowden. When Orr never returns, four new roommates, a group
of shiny-faced twenty-one-year-olds who have never seen combat,
join Yossarian. They clown around, calling him“Yo-Yo,” rousing in
him a murderous hatred. Yossarian tries to persuade Chief White
Halfoat to move in with them and scare the new officers away, but
Halfoat has decided to move into the hospital to die of pneumonia.
Yossarian begins to feel more protective toward the men, but they
then burn Orr’s birch logs and suddenly move Mudd’s belongings out
of the tent—the dead man who has lived there for so long is abruptly
gone. Yossarian panics and flees to Rome with Hungry Joe the day
before Nately’s whore enjoys a good night’s sleep and wakes the
next morning to discover that she is in love.
Summary — Chapter 33: Nately’s Whore
In Rome, Yossarian misses Nurse Duckett and goes searching
in vain for Luciana. He accompanies Nately on a mission to rescue
his whore from some army officers who will not let her leave their
hotel room. After the rescue and a good night’s sleep, Nately’s
whore falls deeply in love with Nately, and they languish in bed
together until her little sister dives in with them. Nately begins
to have wild fantasies of moving his whore and her sister back to
America and bringing the sister up like his own child, but when
his whore hears that he no longer wants her to go out hustling,
she becomes furious and an argument ensues. The other men try to
intervene, and Nately tries to convince them that they can all move
to the same suburb and work for his father. He tries to forbid his
whore from ever speaking again to the old man in the whore’s hotel,
and she becomes even angrier. But she still misses Nately when he
leaves, and she is furious with Yossarian when he punches Nately
in the face and breaks his nose.
Summary — Chapter 34: Thanksgiving
Yossarian breaks Nately’s nose on Thanksgiving after Milo
gets all the men drunk on bottles of cheap whiskey. Yossarian goes
to bed early but wakes up to the sound of machine-gun fire. At first
he is terrified, but he quickly realizes that a group of men are
firing machine guns as a prank. Furious, he takes his gun to exact
revenge. Nately tries to stop him, and Yossarian breaks his nose.
Nately is in the hospital the next morning, and Yossarian feels
terribly guilty for having broken his nose. They encounter the chaplain
in the hospital. He has lied in order to be admitted, claiming to
have a disease called Wisconsin shingles. He can now feel wonderful
since he has learned how to rationalize vice into virtue. Suddenly,
the soldier in white is wheeled into the room, and Dunbar panics.
Dunbar begins screaming, and soon everyone in the ward begins screaming
as well. Nurse Duckett warns Yossarian that she overheard some doctors
talking about how they planned to “disappear” Dunbar. Yossarian
goes to warn his friend but cannot find him.
Summary — Chapter 35: Milo the Militant
When Chief White Halfoat finally dies of pneumonia and
Nately finishes his seventy missions, Yossarian begs Nately not
to volunteer to fly more than seventy missions. But Nately does
not want to be sent home until he can take his whore with him. Yossarian
asks for help from Milo, who immediately goes to see Colonel Cathcart about
having himself assigned to more combat missions. Milo has finally
been exposed as the tyrannical fraud he is. He has no intention
of giving anyone a real share of the syndicate, but his power and influence
are at their peak and everyone admires him. He pretends to feel
guilty for not doing his duty—flying missions—and connivingly asks
the deferential Colonel Cathcart to assign him to more dangerous
combat duties. Milo tells Colonel Cathcart that someone else will
have to run the syndicate, and Colonel Cathcart volunteers himself
and Colonel Korn. When Milo explains the complex operations of the
business to Cathcart, the colonel, falling into Milo’s logical traps,
declares Milo the only man who could possibly run it and forbids
Milo from flying another combat mission. He suggests that he might
make the other men fly Milo’s missions for him, and if one of those
men wins a medal, Milo will get the medal. To make his plan possible,
he says, he will ratchet the number of required missions up to eighty.
The next morning, the alarm sounds, and the men fly off on a mission
that turns out to be particularly deadly. Twelve men are killed,
including Dobbs and Nately.
Summary — Chapter 36: The Cellar
The chaplain is devastated by Nately’s death, which he
learns about at the airfield where the men are returning from their
mission. Suddenly, the chaplain is dragged away by a group of military
police who accuse him of an unspecified crime. A colonel accuses
the chaplain of forgery and interrogates him. His only evidence
is a letter that Yossarian forged in the hospital and signed with
the chaplain’s name some time ago. He then accuses the chaplain
of stealing the plum tomato from Colonel Cathcart and of being Washington Irving.
The men in the room idiotically find him guilty of unspecified crimes
they assume he has committed and then order him to go about his
business while they think of a way to punish him. The chaplain leaves
and furiously goes to confront Colonel Korn about the number of
missions the men are required to fly. He tells Colonel Korn that
he plans to bring the matter directly to General Dreedle’s attention,
but the colonel replies gleefully that General Peckem has replaced
General Dreedle as wing commander. He then tells the chaplain that
he and Colonel Cathcart can make the men fly as many missions as
they want to make them fly—they have even transferred Dr. Stubbs,
who had offered to ground any man with more than seventy missions,
to the Pacific.
Summary — Chapter 37: General Scheisskopf
General Peckem’s victory sours quickly. On his first day
in charge of General Dreedle’s old operation, he learns that Scheisskopf
has been promoted to lieutenant general and is now the commanding
officer for all combat operations. He is in charge of General Peckem
and his entire group, and he intends to make every single man present march
in parades.
