Published 1961 / Length 544 pages
Catch-22 is a satirical novel set during the Second World War, which tells the story of Captain Yossarian, a member of the US Army Air Force, and his attempts to guarantee his own personal safety by evading a war in which he has been forced to participate. In Heller’s book, Catch-22 is an unwritten military law, which allows senior officers to prevent airmen from being excused from flying missions. Airmen could be grounded by being declared insane, but with one catch: Catch-22. As the squadron’s physician Doc Daneeka explains, ‘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.’
Although the main targets of Heller’s venom are the absurdity of war, patriotism and the military establishment, he clearly has other grudges to bear. Through the character of the company’s entrepreneurial mess officer, Milo Minderbinder, Heller takes sarcastic pokes at war profiteering, bureaucracy, capitalism and America’s use of agricultural subsidies. Despite the fact that the elliptical, and in parts repetitive, writing style is not universally popular with readers, Catch-22 is regarded by many as one of the great novels of the twentieth century.
‘Catch-22 is an extremely funny and wholly original novel. Dark, surreal and in parts verging on the grotesque, Catch-22 appealed greatly to my subversive side.’ – ANDY, 29
• Are Heller’s opinions on war and the military overly critical?
• Does the satirical style adequately present Heller’s anti-war arguments?
• The book is often referred to as an archetypal ‘boys’ book’. Does it hold any appeal for female readers?
• Does Catch-22 offer any solutions, or merely highlight problems?
• How does Catch-22 compare to later war novels? Is it still relevant today?
• The phrase ‘catch-22’ comes from Joseph Heller’s novel. The book was originally entitled Catch-18, but this had to be changed so it would not be confused with another recently published Second World War novel (Mila 18 by Leon Uris).
• Initial critical opinion of the book was quite divided. The New Yorker said that it ‘doesn’t even seem to be written; instead, it gives the impression of having been shouted on to paper … what remains is a debris of sour jokes’.
• Slaughterhouse-Five by KURT VONNEGUT – with a darkly comic literary style similar to Heller’s, the main themes of Vonnegut’s classic are also war and the loss of individual free will.
• The Thin Red Line by JAMES JONES – another Second World War novel, in which the characters shown in the most positive light are those most cynical towards the war.
• Nineteen Eighty-Four by GEORGE ORWELL (see here) – explores the forfeiture of individual freedom to the collective good.
• Closing Time by JOSEPH HELLER – the sequel to Catch-22, which follows the future lives of some of the characters.