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Summary
Captain
Joseph Yossarian, a World War II
bombardier, is being stationed on the
island of
Pianosa. He is an
individualist who seeks to
protect his
own life by fleeing to the hospital,
since catch-22 prevents him from either
being
grounded for illness or obtaining
a leave. He
enjoys living
the ward; all
his meals are
served
to him, and in turn,
he simply needs to feign
having pain in
his liver and censor letters of
enlisted men. Bored by his job,
Yossarian takes
on the pseudonym
ìWashington Irving? and even
pretends
to
be
Chaplain
Tappman
once.
Alarms
are
raised, and the government sends two
C.I.D. men
to investigate. Other men
also seek the haven of
the hospital by
feigning illness, but after the
mysterious
death
of
one
of
their
colleagues,
the
soldier
in
white,
the
Texan
forces
them
to
return
to the front.
At the front, the other men are equally
as crazy
as Yossarian. His roommate,
Orr, constantly
crash-lands every time
he goes on a mission and
enjoys talking
about putting apples or horse
chestnuts
in his cheeks. Clevinger, a Harvard
graduate, argues with Yossarian about
whether
people
must
obey
their
institutions
and
fight
the
war.
Havermeyer
munches
on
peanut
butter
brittle
all the time,
loves to shoot innocent field mice
with his 0.45, and never takes evasive
action on
a mission, earning the wrath
of his men. Doc
Daneeka, the squadron's
doctor, is a
hypochondriac who
belittles everyone else's
illnesses
rather
than
treating
them,
and
bemoans
his
own
troubles.
Chief
White
Halfoat
brags
about
his displacement by
ì
Amer
icans?
because they
strike oil wherever he and
his family go and
constantly gets
drunk. McWatt, Yossarians
brainless
pilot,
drives
Yossarian
up
the
wall
by
flying
his airplane a few inches right above
Yossarian's tent. Hungry Joe has
screaming
nightmares, although he
denies it each morning,
and fistfights
the cat that belongs to his
roommate.
Chaplain Tappman, along with his
assistant, has been ejected from the
Officers'
Headquarters and spends his
time peacefully in
the woods on the
periphery of camp. He tries to
stand
up
against
Colonel
Cathcart
for
Yossarian,
but is too spineless. His assistant,
the
atheistic Corporal Whitcomb,
constantly abuses
the chaplain and
collaborates with Colonel
Cathcart to
have the chaplain court-martialed.
Likewise, the commanding officers
engage in
squabbles and pointless
activities. General
Peckem and General
Dreedle vie pointlessly for
power.
However,
since
ex-P.F.C.
Wintergreen,
who
is in charge of mail,
destroys General Peckem's
letters
because of their verbosity, General
Dreedle always wins. Meanwhile,
ex-P.F.C.
Wintergreen
is
always
going
AWOL
and,
each
time,
is punished by being forced
to dig six-feet deep
holes.
Colonel Scheisskopf obsesses over how to
win the weekly parades, to the point of
ignoring
his
own
wife's
sexual
overtures.
Colonel
Cathcart
attempts
to
become
a
general
by
volunteering
his
squadrons for the most dangerous
missions
possible and constantly
raising the number of
missions that the
men must fly to obtain leave.
Major
Major, who is newly promoted, hides
in
his
office
away
from
everyone
else,
signing
his
name
Washington Irving and
pitting the C.I.D. men
against each
other.
After the cancelled mission to
Bologna, Nately,
one of Yossarian's
colleagues, becomes
lovestruck with
this whore he meets in an
apartment.
Aarfy
and
the
other
soldiers
mock
him
and the
whore herself rejects Nately as boring,
but Nately insists that he wants to
marry her.
Captain
Black
sleeps
with
her
each
time
to
torment
Nately. Despite this
outer show of apathy, when
Yossarian
beats up Nately in a fury, the whore
blames
him
and
tries
to
beat
him
up.
Nevertheless,
shortly
afterwards, Yossarian breaks the
terrible
news
of
Nately's
death,
and
she
doggedly
follows
him
from
Rome
back
to
the
camp,
trying
to
kill him with a knife.
Finally, Yossarian
disposes of her by
throwing her out of the back
of an
airplane. When he hears that her younger