It seems like just about every Must-Read book list has Catch-22 on it. I've been thinking for awhile that I should at least attempt it, since it appears on so many of those lists but it just sounded like something I would find utterly boring. A novel set in an army camp during WWII about some bombardier and his squadron? Nah, not something I have much interest in.

Last week, as I was looking for my classic-of-the-month for August, I decided why not just give in and read this? If I absolutely hated it then I could mark it abandoned and be done with it. I'd at least have given it a try. Much to my delight, I found that this book is right up my alley! Yeh, it might be about a bunch of army dudes but it is funny!! Prepared to be bored, I was surprised to find myself laughing on the very first page.

Catch-22 is brilliant and clever, insightful and witty. Occasionally it felt a little long and could have done with a better edit, but then two pages later I'd be laughing again and not minding the length at all. It is satire and pokes fun at the absurdity of war, nationalism, patriotism, and religion. For instance, in war there are no winners. In war, everyone loses. As for god..... in my favourite passage of the book, Yosserian delcares,

"Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements?"

How can you not love that!!

At times philosophical and at almost all times funny, Catch-22 makes you think as it makes you laugh. It is deserving of all those Must-Read lists it appears on and if it's not on yours, it should be! 4.5 stars rounded up.

Hmm, where to start with a book like this one. A book that is a third Kafka, a third Vonnegut, a third Pynchon and completely insane? For the first 200 or 250 pages, it is like a broken record or a movie loop with Sisyphus rolling that boulder up a hill in American WWII battle fatigues (and a flight suit and a Mae West life preserver sans the inflation module thanks the M&M Enterprises). Then, when the flak starts flying and the blood is splattered everywhere it is intense right up until the end.

It features Chaucerian cast of characters that would not be out of place in the German chaos of Gravity's Rainbow or The Tin Drum. A few examples:

Major Major Major Major: "He was a proud and independent man who was opposed to unemployment insurance and never hesitated to whine, whimper, wheedle, and extort for as much as he could get from whoever he could. He was a devout man whose pulpit was everywhere." But if you want a meeting with him, you'll have to wait until he has climbed out the window of his office and run down the gully.

Colonel Cathart: "a slick, successful, slipshod, unhappy man of thirty-six who lumbered while we walked and wanted to be a general...[he was] impervious to absolutes. He could measure his own progress only in relationship to others, and his idea of excellence was to do something at least as well as all the men his same age who were doing the same thing even better." Even if (or especially if) that meant raising the number of combat missions from 50 to 80 to impress General Peckham or General Dreedle or (gasp) General Scheisskopf (!!) whose wife was well, just a little promiscuous.

Then there is the Anabaptist chaplain who started to wonder about whether God exists and is tortured by his assistant, the sadistic Colonel Whitcomb and spends a lot of time wondering whether everything he sees is déjà vu, presque vu or jamais vu.

Also, the ill-fated young Nately and the equally ill-fated old man debating whether America was winning the war or whether Italy was since Italy has already survived more than two millennia more than the US even existed: "This sordid, vulturous, diabolical old man reminded [him] of his father because the two were nothing at all alike."

And then there is Yossarian, the protagonist. Perhaps the insane Captain (decorated for making a second bombing pass that killed Kraft) being the sanest person on the island of Pianosa despite being haunted by Snowden, the soldier in white, the dead man in his tent, persecuted and nearly killed by Nately's whore and all the death and absurdity around him. Yossarian is an everyman who is justifiably paranoid, but just a cog in the system and the only person that retains a sense of outrage at the senseless violence all around him.

This is the most anti-war book I believe I have ever read. It makes M*A*S*H look like a US Army recruiting poster in comparison. I was horrified by one-man syndicate M&M Enterprises of Milo Minderbender the cynic who deals with total impunity openly with both sides - even manning the anti-aircraft flak machines on the Italian coast shooting down US bombers and bombing his own squadron with loads of casualties. (This of course scarily parallels the Trump links with Putin and Russia and the massive amounts of money that Trump stands to make as POTUS.) Kid Simpson's slaughter was perhaps the most gruesome of them all, but the the scenes of terror and anarchy that Yossarian sees in Rome before being arrested for being there without a pass (leaving the murderous Aarfy smiling and careless as always) were chilling.

Do not come here seeking logic or sanity because in war, neither has any place - not in Catch-22 and I suppose in real life either. It reminded me of a cab driver I had once in New Orleans (true story) who was bragging to me about burying Iraquis in their trenches by rolling over them with tanks and bulldozers during the first Gulf War. When I mentioned that it was against the Geneva Convention to bury men alive, he shrugged in the rearview mirror and said "They told us that those rules didn't apply to us since this was just a conflict and not a war and besides, we were the US Army and not bound by some stupid European rules."

If, as I did, you struggle through the first 200 pages, the pace picks up - as does the violence - and you will find yourself cheering for Yossarian and racing to the end (if not, as Yossarian, to Sweden.)

I would give it 5 stars, but the first 200 pages are really torture to get through, so for lack of being able to give a 4.5, I rounded down to 4 stars. Regardless, I can clearly see, however, why this classic is held in such high esteem. May we never go through another war like this again. I can also see some of the inspiration for Alan Alda for creating M*A*S*H in the 70s and, reading Fire In the Lake about Vietnam, we learned absolutely nothing from the errors that Heller describes.

Reading the second Rick Atkinson book of The Liberation Trilogy about the Allied campaign in Italy. Every bit as brutal and chaotic as Heller portrayed it - particularly the brutal inch-by-inch campaign up from Salerno to Rome! Anzio was particularly horrendous. Curious fact: Roger Waters' father (the one he eulogizes in The Wall) died at Anzio.

Highly recommended as a piece of essential anti-war black humor.


Did anyone watch Clooney's adaptation on Hulu? Is it worthwhile? ??

It's not often I say this about a novel, but I'm really going to miss these guys. Oh, and gals, Nurse Duckett, Luciana, and even Nately's whore. Alright, maybe not General Dreedle; although his ill-tempered rants were great, but the rest of them; and there are a lot of them, have been like a family the last few weeks. A BIG family. Yossarian, Nately, Orr, Milo, Dunbar, Dobbs, Snowden, Aarfy, Havermeyer, Appleby, Hungry Joe, Kraft, McWatt, Kid Sampson, Huple, all were like brothers. As for the uncles, well, lets just say there were quite a few! Can't remember the last time I read a book with so many characters. Even some of the minor ones felt like major ones to me. And speaking of major, what about Major Major Major Major! Ha, classic! I swear it's some of the names here I'm going to miss just as much as their personalities.

I'm not sure if this person had had a bang on the head or something, but I was told that this would read similar to Pynchon. No. It's nothing like reading Pynchon. Despite the fact that the narrative doesn't run in sequence, is madly eccentric and full of loony antics, and has loads of differing points of view, Catch-22 in comparison was a walk in the park, and I don't get the readers who just didn't get it. It's satire. Not Captain Corelli's Mandolin. I'll admit though, I wasn't so sure about this at first, but it was a novel that grew on me immensely once it settled down and you get used to the way Heller is going about his business. It's no doubt comical. Really comical. But all the way through beneath the surface of amusement I found, with all seriousness, that Heller was saying something outrageous and unforgivably so, about the stupidity of what war does, and and how the system of false values on which it is based truly fucks up our whole way of life. The horror he set out to expose wasn't confined to the bloody battlefield or the never-ending missions of dropping bombs but pervaded the complete labyrinthine fabric of establishment power. There is so much here that again reminds us of all that we have taken for granted in our world and should not. Also, although set during World-War-II, I can fully understand why Heller's novel went down so well with the Vietnam generation.

Catch-22 isn't a work of one or two massive incidents, but rather of so many memorable middle-sized and smaller ones. So many in fact, that even now not long having finished it, I've probably already forgotten half of them. One that will never be lost to me though is that ending. It was great. I was beaming. I truly was. It was the same sort of feeling I had at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest when Chief throws the sink through the window and runs off. Sure, there were a few occasions when I wished that certain things had played out differently, but Catch-22 gave me so many pleasurable reading hours during what is for me the worst time of the year: made even worse due to you know what, that it has to be a five for me. I'm really starting to believe now that this is indeed a masterpiece.

I’ve stopped reading this for the second time in quick succession. I really love the idea of Catch 22 – that is, that there are things in life where, for example, to show you are crazy you need to say you are crazy, but saying you are crazy proves you can’t be. And while these paradoxes are interesting and sometimes even amusing – I found this book anything but. I found that the humour was far too laboured and far too ‘over-the-top’ to be really all that funny. The repetitions in the book started to drive me nuts too. Not just the obvious repetitions of things to identify characters – although these made the characters seem to be more caricatures and highly irritating ones, at that – but also the idea that this was a working through of every example of a Catch 22 situation that the writer could think up also started to annoy me. I know it was meant as parody, but …

I think part of the problem may be that I think the humour has not aged well. I have had a very similar experience with a book I loved when I first read it a hundred years ago – Milligan’s Puckoon– but when I started reading it again recently I had to stop half way through as I barely getting a smile out of it. This has worried me greatly as I was thinking of going back and reading his Adolf Hitler My Part in his Downfall – but might just rely on my pleasant memories of that book.

I had really hoped to enjoy this, and perhaps I would have if I had read it in the 70s when I first planned to – but unfortunately this one didn’t work for me nearly as well as I had hoped. Now, I just found it far too heavy-handed

„Параграф 22“ е ужасяваща амалгама, люшкаща се между трагичното и смешното, с една-единствена глава, която описва изцяло откровено отблъскващата и неподправена картина на резултатите от безумието, назовано „война“. В останалата си част книгата представлява съшита от различни гледни точки история, на моменти нестройно лъкатушеща между минало и настояще, без особено отличима граница, в която по-скоро иронично са описани стремежите, копнежите, опитите за оцеляване, прекарването на свободното време, изпълнено с тежко очакване (ненапразно не споменавам думата „надежда“) на персонажите. На фона на военните действия се вихри студенокръвен кариеризъм, безумно мащабна бюрокрация и изтръпваща алчност. Разбира се, те са добронамерено прикрити от хората, които ги упражняват, под евфемистични епитети като „възход за родината“, „чест“ и „дял за всички“.

Докато някой се качва на самолета, за да извърши последния си боен полет и да стане на хрускави розови останки във въздуха, друг долу размишлява истински напрегнато на кого от двамата мразещи се членове на висшия команден състав да се хареса повече. Човешките животи са не повече от клишираните съболезнователни писма, които следва да се изпратят на опечалените близки, а броят на задължителните извършени полети трябва непрекъснато да се увеличава – не за победата на родината във войната, разбира се – просто за да се спечели преднина пред генерала на съседната авиочаст, предвидил по-малък брой полети за своята група. А, да – и е добре когато самолетите пускат бомбите над целта, да ги пускат по-близо една до друга – разбирате ли, така стават хубави въздушни снимки, които могат да бъдат поместени в Saturday Evening Post. Така и не се разбрах със себе си кой беше по-голям гад – Каткарт, който пращаше хората на безсмислена смърт за собствен кеф или Майлоу, който в крайна сметка заряза спасяването на едно малко момиче заради контрабанден тютюн.

Това е книга за лудостта – за лудостта на лудите, за в пъти по-дълбоката лудост на нормалните. В романа на Джоузеф Хелър Смъртта е неописан персонаж, който си няма собствена глава, но е винаги с всички, седи на земята и си тананика нелепа песничка, чакайки да ѝ дойде времето. И те го чувстват. Книга за това какво правиш, когато си изправен пред неизбежното. Някои се влюбват и намират в това смисъла – и умират. На някои не им пука – и също умират. Други се побъркват от страх и са готови на всичко от отчаяние – и в крайна сметка пак умират. А има и такива, които успяха да доплуват до Швеция и да оживеят – странно, но подобни неща също се случват...

В края за по-несхватливите читатели Хелър съвсем откровено си е казал за какво е идело реч през цялото време. За момент нещата стават по-истински, по-малко сюрреалистични и вече не ти се струва, че си попаднал в някакъв „просто шеметен фарс“ от безумни думи и действия. Войната е гнусна и оголена до окървавен, наръфан кокал, и хвърлена в лицето ти. И ти се ще, точно сега, поне за момент да вярваш, че ще има възмездие. Дори думите „Не можеш да отнемеш живота на едно човешко същество и да ти се размине безнаказано, дори когато това същество е бедна слугиня “ го вещаят. Защото те не са валидни само за конкретния случай, а ти се иска да смяташ, че всички ония, които са отнели надеждите и бъдещето на подчинените си, също ще си получат заслуженото. Но „имаше само една засечка... и това беше параграф 22“.
Е, някаква надежда накрая все пак има. Иначе не би имало смисъл.

I can't review this one properly, I listened to it on audiobook over about a month and never really felt involved with it. Each time I resumed reading it I can barely recall what happened when I last paused it. I find this to be a very hard book to engage with due to its non-linear and fragmented structure. Each chapter tends to be a little vignette about the absurd situations experienced by the soldiers of the 256th squadron on the island of Pianosa, and each chapter more often than not does not lead to the next chapter. While Yossarian is clearly the central character, the narrative point of view often switches to another character's who soon fades into the background or disappear from the book entirely. The frequent but temporary point of view switches make it hard for me to keep track of who all the numerous minor characters are.

On the positive side, the book is very cleverly written and often very funny, especially when it is focused on the absurdity of circular reasoning favored by the bureaucratic colonels and majors. I can see why this is considered a classic even though it is not particularly appealing to me on the whole. If I really wanted to review this book properly and fairly I would have to read it in print format over a week or so, but there is no point in doing that as I have absorbed enough of the content to know that it is not for me. I won't dissuade anybody from reading it because I don't really know who will enjoy this book and who won't. Catch-22 is known to be a humorous novel with serious undertones, but if you are thinking of reading it just for a quick laugh you may be in for a surprise (not necessarily in a good way).

I suffered through about 60 pages, and finally put it down. I very rarely ever leave a book unfinished.

The author narrates and introduces us to Yossarian, who does not want to fly in the war. I get that. I get the whole catch 22 scenerio... You have to be insane to fly the plane. If you can get a dr to say you are insane, you wont have to fly. But in order to tell a dr that you are insane, this actually means you are sane. So you must continue to fly... which makes you insane. blah blah blah.

What I couldnt get past was the author's constant bouts of Attention Deficet Disorder.... He went off on tangents, introducing a new character seemingly every paragraph, and seemed to lose his train of thought only to regain it 2 pages later.

I couldnt take all the jumping around, and was completely lost the whole time... at times rereading the prior page thinking I missed some important tie-in somewhere....

Am I the only one on this planet who is asking myself what heck everyone was smoking when they read this book and actually enjoyed it?

Worst book I've ever had the misfortune to pick up. My dad warned me that this book was lower on the evolution scale than a wet turd, but I thought I'd try it anyway. I hated this with every fibre in my body and with any luck the book will just crawl away and die.

The characters were obnoxious, moronic gits who I hoped would all die at the hands of Jason Vorhees very soon and there was no way I'd ever connect with that idiot who was meant to be our beloved hero. The dialogue was incomprehensible crap that was pointless and baffling, and you are left wondering what the hell they are gibbering about and why each scene was even written! What the hell is the purpose in talking complete shite page after page with no meaning or sense to it??? I couldn't see the point in the story at all and it was with a sense of joy that I threw the book into the bag marked 'charity shop'-then I found myself wondering what the poor charity shop had ever done to me to deserve receiving that book...How the hell this ever became a classic is a complete mystery to me. A classic piece of excrement perhaps.

I know plenty people love it and I'm happy for you, but it's just not for me I'm afraid!

NB edited 2021
Oh dear, not a nice review at all! I wrote this review ages ago and I admit I don't write such ugly reviews now. I'm more restrained and fair in being critical if I don't like something. I'm rarely so mean in reviews I write now!

A Full-Fledged Flying Circus
3,5/5 rounded up to 4 for puns and general humor :)


The plot, or: How to get grounded in 10 easy lessons? :
(disclaimer: no responsibility can be taken for direct or indirect damage resulting from the use of the information contained in the novel and/or review).

A US Army Air squadron on Pianosa Island, WW2. Captain Yossarian tries to make it out alive, while Colonel Cathcart constantly increases the number of required combat missions a soldier has to fly before they may return home.

Also, should you request an evaluation to be declared unfit to fight and be sent home, you must request the evaluation in the first place, this being considered proof enough of your own sanity. Catch-22.
In other words, Yossarian is screwed.

And yet, Catch-22 is but the towering paradox, the absurdity of absurdities, the keystone of all nonsense happening in the course of this novel, and as you read on, you are witnessing all manner of other shenanigans, scams, schemes and petty feuds going on in between a full-blown pageant of ludicrously inept officers, frauds and patent con artists.

The unchronological, polyphonic form of the novel itself mirrors the abysmal failure of communication and the triumph of upstarts, disinformation and publicity (we call that 'faire-savoir' in French).

In the end, Catch-22 offers a grotesque carnival of conceit and malice, pettiness and callousness, cruelty and ambition. Mostly slapstick and zany in the early stages, darker undertones kick later, offering a variegated, complex novel.





Above, the building block of Milo Minderbinder's syndicate


n  Buddy read with Tara - 23/05/2020n


BOOK/MOVIE ADVICE :

Goofiness department:
Sin noticias de Gurb
A Confederacy of Dunces

Paranoia & personality split division:
Clans of the Alphane Moon
Lies, Inc.

Bureaucratic absurdity and self-agrandizement locker:
The Castle
Paroles

Propaganda studio:
Leningrad: State of Siege
La Grande Guerre

Airplanes hangar:
L’Équipage
La Bretagne dans la bataille de l'Atlantique (about aerial warfare during WW2)

Fantastical realism conglomerate:
Rigodon
Berlin Alexanderplatz
(esp. regarding the 'Eternal City' chapter in Catch-22 )

By the way, I find a striking number of common traits between Colonel Cathcart in Catch-22 and Luzhin in Crime and Punishment :)


FILMS:

- About civilian life during war and in the aftermath:

n  Grave of the Fireflies - Isao Takahatan

n  Germany Year Zero - Rossellinin

n  Under the Flags of the Rising Sun - Kinji Fukasakun



- Absurd:
Brazil - Terry Gilliam (and all materials by Monty Python)

n  Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - Stanley Kubrickn



MUSIC:
Siberian Khatru - Yes

Man of War / Big Boots - Radiohead

Soldier Side - System of a Down

بعد از مدت ها، که به دنبال خوندن کتابی با تم ضد جنگ بودم، بالا موفق شدم و پیداش کردم :))
خسته و نا امید بودم از جستجو تا اینکه یه روز دیدم این کتاب توی لیست در حال ترجمه نشر چشمه اومده، انتظار تقریبا طولانی ای بود ولی ارزششو داشت :دی
-------------------
تبصره 22:
جنگ و پرواز با هواپیمای جنگی خطرناکه، اگه یک سرباز دیوونه باشه، می تونه بیاد و خودشو معرفی کنه و از ادامه جنگ مر��ص بشه، ولی شخصی که دیوونه باشه هیچوقت نمی فهمه که جنگ خطرناکه پس در واقع هیچوقت نمیاد که بدلیل دیوونگیش معافیت بخواد!

این تبصره ی 22 خیلی شکل های متفاوت تری داره و در کل کتاب خواننده رو همراهی می کنه! :))
---------------------

داستان کتاب حال و هوای خاصی داره و برعکس دوسنت اگزوپری که چهره ی خاکستری و تلخی از جنگ و پرواز و هواپیما نشون میده، جوزف هلر تونسته با سبک خاصی چهره ی جنگ و افسران جنگی و بزرگان جنگ های جهانی رو خیلی مسخره و البته تا حدودی کودن جلوه بده و در عین حال کتاب غیرمستقیم آثار مخرب جنگ رو بتونه به مخاطب نشون بده.
مترجم خیلی خوب کار کرده (متاسفانه سانسور دیده می شه در کتاب) و با توجه به چاپ اول بودن کتاب، اشتباهی درش نیست (البته من دید کارشناسی ندارم و یه خواننده ی معمولی هستم و بطورکلی گفتم)

ارزش کتاب خیلی بالاس و لقب شاهکار کاملا مناسبشه، من توضیحی از داستان کتاب نمی دم چون با خط خط کتاب می شه زندگی کرد. اکیدا و شدیدا توصیه می کنم بخونید این کتاب رو، حتی اگه از تم جنگ و ضد جنگ خوشتون نمی یاد!

While I agree with everyone who says the book is important, I also think it could have been chopped down by about 300 pages.
The story is about how lives are ruined when the wrong people are put in charge, why war isn't some grand adventure, and the ridiculous nature of bureaucracy in general.
It's not so much funny as it is satirical, and the joke wears thin as it spins in circles with nonsensical stories that add very little to the overall reading experience.
My opinion, of course.



I am extremely glad I read this because most people know what you mean when you say Catch-22, but maybe not everyone knows it originated from this book.

n  Yossarian looked at him soberly and tried another approach. "Is Orr crazy?"
"He sure is," Doc Daneeka said.
"Can you ground him?"
"I sure can. But first he has to ask me to. That's part of the rule."
"Then why doesn't he ask you to?"
"Because he's crazy," Doc Daneeka said. "He has to be crazy to keep flying combat missions after all the close calls he's had. Sure, I can ground Orr. But first he has to ask me to."
"That's all he has to do to be grounded?"
"That's all. Let him ask me."
"And then you can ground him?" Yossarian asked.
"No. Then I can't ground him."
"You mean there's a catch?"
"Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.n



I appreciate learning more about the source material for stuff like this. But the story doesn't go anywhere but in a sideways circle, so I was absolutely gagging for this to be over with after a relatively short time. And this is not a relatively short book. By the end of it, I had exhausted all of my patience and was annoyed by everything from the dialogue to the character themselves.



If you're a reader like me who needs things to kind of go somewhere in a somewhat concise time period, then you may need to temper your expectations with this one.
Still, I'm not sorry I ticked this one off the bucket list.

I think Catch-22 by Joseph Heller is a work of genius. It has imperfections. I don't care. But it's got a brutal message - one which I feel is Truth, despite the painful anatomy lesson used to teach it. It's not simply satirical and cynical, it's exposing the naked falsehoods of human civilization in a scream of agony.

This is a book about that moment in time when one discovers how awful the world really is. Fortunately, most of us who have experienced our own ripping away of existential slipcovers find ways - like watching cat videos - to find our way back to enjoying another sunrise again. Perhaps playful insanity IS the solution to humanity's, and cats', horror of facing the uncertainty of survival.

In Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' Heart of Darkness evil comes from our inborn duality. The character Kurtz, with nothing external within hundreds of miles to stop or control him - no societal peer pressures or advice, no religious strictures, no legal punishments, no one with his weapons or charisma - is tempted by having the powers of a mortal god into destroying the human flesh around him under the delusion he is bringing civilization to the wild chaos of the overwhelming jungle and its people. Kurtz believes Africa to be without righteous order or direction, resistant to rules, laws, progress and religion, a dark, unknown, unmapped region, mysterious and without the light of European wisdom and industry (which was the white European's idea of Africa and Europe at the time - not true then or now). However, as Kurtz resorts to increasingly strong measures to impose rule of law and control on the Eden he unknowingly was trying to tame, he accidentally lets loose the snake demon in his own heart. Too late, Kurtz discovers he has become a monster, and worse, without meaning or intent except that of the torturer. Or perhaps he discovers that the powers of a god are unbearable. In any case, in deciding to master the darkness in the jungle by releasing the darkness of corruption and evil he carried inside himself, he loses the boundary that defined him as a civilized man. Instead, he became one with the wild, evil jungle. Moral - don't give in to defeating the Evil outside by letting loose the Evil inside. Hang on to civilization with everything you've got. It's value is in holding back Evil.

Catch-22 turns all of that inside out -literally. Mankind begins in a state of innocence and meaning well. Man is living in an Eden of delusion and dreams. There is no snake. There is no seed of darkness or evil within or without, only individuality and sensuality. Our societies blind us to reality, while binding us to unreal perceptions of the mind. We motivate ourselves through ambition, philosophy, religion, the creation of enemies and purpose, while indulging the body in sensual delights, not noticing for awhile how temporary or ineffectual these are in moving forward (or if moving forward is real). However. perhaps through war, as set up in this novel, sometimes the fabric of purpose, meaning, and civilization which cover the body of human reality like clothes on our naked bodies can be accidentally removed and delusions exposed. (John Yossarian, the main character, stops wearing his uniform and begins reporting for duty naked for days after discovering the truth about being alive when skin is literally torn off the flesh of a man.) Rules become nonsensical. Religion is nonsensical. Philosophy is nonsensical. Good and evil is nonsense. In other words, civilization is nonsensical. Men have the uncanny ability to become the thing they declare they won't be, or allow to happen what they strive so mightily to stop. Pure sensuality is no place of permanence, only temporary and ephemeral sensation.. Civilization isn't guiding us, but making blind fools of us. In the end, nature will assert itself. Strip off the fabric of delusion, and there is no intelligence, soul or higher purpose. There is only blood, bone, liver, lungs, muscles, stomach and intestines.

But what are we if we strip off everything and see the truth, the meaninglessness and purposeless of breathing and dying? The book hints at escaping into a different paradigm, a dream of our own making instead of being misled by the tropes of our societies (Sweden is the Paradise in Catch-22). Pass out the parachutes.