The Catch-22 review

The Catch-22 review

Catch -22 is a satirical novel that was written by Joseph Heller. Heller was an American, and the book was published in the year 1961. The book is centered on one character, John Yossarian. Yossarian is an American soldier who specializes in bombs, and he is stationed on the Mediterranean island during the era of the Second World War (Light, 2016). The novel describes some of the desperate attempts of John to stay alive. According to John, the entire activities of the war are planned to be part of his personal life. He understands that the military is seeking ways to lead him to his death. With that in mind, John takes most of the time to talk about the means of escaping from his missions.

According to the mover, the Air force Army regulation asserts that an officer is suspected to be insane when he accepts to undertake dangerous combat missions willingly. However, the point of an officer seeking to be relieved of the dangerous tasks proves his sanity (Light, 2016). In this case, John is taken to be sane. Therefore, every time that John tries to make a move is countered by proof for his sanity, and therefore, he is not eligible to be relieved of his duties. The title of the novel was incorporated into the English language. It refers to a situation where the only possible solution to a problem is rejected by a circumstance that is inherent in the problem.

According to the excerpt, John had tried all possible solutions to leave the military. However, he did not luck as every move that he made proved that he was not insane, and therefore, he was legible to continue serving in the military. As per the excerpt, the only ultimate solution was to give his entire life to live in a martial hospital. IN the hospital, John was not alone (Light, 2016). The wards were filled with military officers. The excerpt does not provide adequate information as to whether all the patients were genuinely sick, or they were just playing a role like John was doing. It was a requirement that all officers admitted in the wards were required to censor letters that were written by the enlisted-men patients. These enlisted-men patients were provided with hopital-wards of their own.

According to the excerpt, John was disappointed by the issuance of the enlisted-men with private wards. It seemed like they were perceived to be more important than the rest of the patients. The work of censoring letters proved to be boring because of the monotonous of having to repeat one task several every day. John was more bored by the job of editing letters. He was different from the other patients because he was not sick; he was just avoiding his duties and responsibilities (Light, 2016). John decided to be creative to break the monotonous of censoring letters a day in day out. He decided to devise some games into the work of editing letters.  The first game was removing all adverbs and adjectives from every letter that got into his hands. He referred to this with the phrase “death to all modifiers.” The second game was referred to as “making war to all articles” in the letter. The war to articles means that all the messages that passed through John’s hands lost all articles. This was one of his highest creativity. It erected intranear tensions that were more dynamic.

As he progressed in his games, John started proscribing sections of salutations and signatures in the letters. He would alter the greetings and signature while leaving the body of the letters untouched. One time, the game had elevated to higher levels that he blacked out the entire letter only to change the salutation such that it bared the name “Mary.” At the bottom of the letter, John signed with the name of A.T Tappman, who was the group Chaplain in the US Army (Light, 2016). Later on, his creativity in attacking the letters appeared to reach its end. However, this did not mean that the game had to end. He changed the game so that he started attacking the names and the addresses on the envelopes of the letters. He would change addresses to homes and streets and causing miscommunication between families and their loved ones in the military hospitals as though he as some kind of a god.

However, there is another issue that required more creativity. Catch-22 expected that every letter that passed through the hands of a censoring officer to bear their names (Light, 2016). John did not read most of the letters that passed through him. In those letters that he did not read, John could write his name. John wrote his name on the letters that John did not read-only. In the case that he read a letter, he could use the anonymous name Irving Washington. Irving Washington was not a real character but a decoy name used by John in his games. However, the use of the name led to the deployment of a CID officer in the ward. Everyone in the ward realized that the new patient was a CID because he did not do the censuring and that he kept on asking about Irving Washington.

Work Cited

Light, Alfred R. “Avoiding the Contribution Catch-22: CERCLA Administrative Orders for Cleanup Are Civil Actions.” Envtl. L. Rep. News & Analysis 46 (2016): 10791.