Joseph Heller’s novel “Catch 22” is a satirical novel of war and absurdity. Examples of the absurd in the novel “Catch 22 are plentiful. We can find examples of the absurd in our own lives as well.”
The absurdity of monetary selfishness in catch 22
A passage in chapter four, the conversation between Doc Daneeka and Yossarian, is important because it brings to the surface and then questions the long-practiced idea of ​​exchanging favors with one another. This practice is summarized by the last question in this chapter, “What else is there?” In other words, someone who exchanges favors with another person is only acting in their own interest, and as this novel finally shows, there is much more to it than that; there is also love, the only true motivation for morality. One character who acts as if there is nothing but self is Havermeyer, who in chapter 38 reveals what his motivation is in life and to join the reserves is money. Havermeyer’s fleeting satisfaction from money connects Daneeka and Yossarian’s conversation with the novel as a whole. With the risk of death, it can be said that Havermeyer’s monetary motivation to join the military is also absurd.
Absurd rationalization in “Catch 22”
Another example of absurdity in “Catch 22” is in the last paragraph of chapter 17 (The soldier in white). Discuss how each day Yossarian faced was another dangerous mission against morality. He had been surviving these missions for twenty-eight years, despite catastrophes lurking everywhere. What is important about this passage is its parallelism with the increasing number of missions to be carried out. It is rationalization that justifies the increase in required missions; Similarly, there is rationalization when an immoral act is committed. This episode points out the effect of such rationalizations or Catch 22 in life; they can make one simply give up on morality because he or she may think that it is useless to be moral in a word with so much evil in it. The reference to Yosarrian miraculously surviving these missions against morality fits the book as a whole because it alludes to one of the major theological debates presented in the book: How can a loving God be accounted for when there is evil in the world? ?
Absurd in our own lives
As an example of absurdity in our own life, let’s consider it illegal to accelerate, but it is not illegal to use radar detectors. A commercial for radar detectors, which I heard on the radio, read: “Drive Responsibly and Protect Yourself from $ 100 Speeding Tickets.” This relates to the ideas about the absurd that we discuss in class because these two ideas are inconsistent; You cannot be a responsible driver and speed at the same time.
Nonsense in the fine print
A second way of thinking about the absurdity of Catch 22 is the “fine print.” In the novel, the characters were subjected to contradictory fine print contracts. Today, there are similar examples from real life. Note that credit card agencies send offers for credit cards stating that if you choose to obtain insurance to protect the card, to be approved for the card, you must sign your name. In small print it was said that when you signed the card with your name, you automatically accepted the theft insurance! against theft, there would be an additional annual fee. There were even two different boxes on this form, one to check if you wanted the insurance and one to check if you did not want it.