Catch-22

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1961

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-11

Chapters 12-20

Chapters 21-25

Chapters 26-31

Chapters 32-42

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

Catch-22

Though the novel’s titular Catch-22 is a specific military clause about mental illness and military service, the same essential concept recurs through numerous bureaucratic and legal paradoxes that trap characters and remove their control over their own destiny. Catch-22s often appear as a method of control to prevent characters from acting freely. The first use of the phrase, for example, is when Doc Daneeka explains to Yossarian that a psychiatric diagnosis won’t ground him from flying missions: Anyone who wants to excuse evade the dangerous missions is, by definition, “sane” as no rational person would want to subject themselves to such danger. Moreover, the doctor explains, the demonstrably “insane” people (like Orr) can only be declared such by telling the doctor—and, in doing so, they will be demonstrating their own “sanity.” Such a diagnosis thus can never excuse men from missions, as the paradoxical legal system places them in logical trap.

The Catch-22 becomes a recurring motif. Whenever characters encounter some kind of legal paradox that denies them agency, they instinctively refer to Catch-22. Yossarian begins to preemptively refer to the paradox when he encounters whatever bureaucratic rule is forcing him to fly another mission or remain in the military. The Catch-22 motif demonstrates the senselessness of war: The ridiculous rules and impossible logic of the Catch-22s mirrors the meaningless, ridiculous, and illogical conflict. Nothing makes sense in a world governed by absurd rules.

The Catch-22 is not limited to those in the military. The war’s senselessness is imposed on civilians. The Rome citizens complain to Yossarian that the military police threw people out of their apartments, citing Catch-22 as a reason. Catch-22 gives the military police the right to do whatever they want, in effect, so it becomes a demonstration of how the military imposes violence on others through self-justifying, unassailable rules. The American soldiers arrive in Italy as liberators, but they ultimately inflict the same senseless violence as the Germans or the fascists. With Catch-22 as an excuse, the soldiers and police never need to justify themselves in a moral or logical sense. They can point to the opaque bureaucracy and continue as they please. Catch-22 symbolizes the totalizing effect of illogical violence, which dominates and brutalizes everyone involved.

The Soldier in White

The Soldier in White is an injured man admitted to the hospital while Yossarian is receiving treatment. The Soldier in White is anonymous, wrapped completely in bandages, and he remains silent throughout the novel. Because no one knows his identity, he is alienated from the other men. He cannot communicate with them, and they cannot understand or know him. His injuries—inflicted on him by the war—separate him from human interaction. His emotional and physical isolation are imposed on him by the military, turning him into a symbol of the devastating impact of war. Not only is his body ruined by the violence of the war, but those injuries also cut him off from society and prevent him from forming meaningful bonds with others.

To the other men in the hospital ward, the Soldier in White is a harbinger of their own fate. They recognize his pain and his symbolic alienation, and he seems to them like a hollow man without an identity. He therefore also symbolizes everything that they fear they will become, so his arrival on the ward is met with anxiety and outrage. On the second appearance of the Soldier in White (who may be an entirely different man suffering similar wounds), the men rebel. They are horrified that the Soldier in White should haunt their hospital. His symbolism is a heavy burden on them, and they no longer recognize his humanity; they only see the Soldier in White as a reminder of their own misfortune.

The Syndicate

Milo builds a vast network of black-market operations that he names “the syndicate,” and he gradually expands the enterprise into a transcontinental operation. He corners the market in Egyptian cotton, for example, and his trading wins him power and influence throughout Europe and Africa. However, his attempts to explain this quick rise to power are confusing. Yossarian cannot comprehend how Milo and his syndicate make money or gain their influence. Yossarian’s confusion symbolizes the men’s alienation from the economy. They accept Milo’s explanations because they find the free market to be an incomprehensible force of nature. The syndicate symbolizes the free market’s presence as an unknowable, abstract entity that nevertheless dictates the course of their lives.

Milo turns a small mess hall operation into the world’s largest smuggling enterprise. The syndicate—with Milo’s frequent allusions to free-market capitalism and the rights of big business enterprises—also represents the amorality of a capital system that can make a fortune from war profiteering. Milo and his syndicate have only one value: profit. As long as they make money, their actions are justified. Milo not only sells military possessions, but he steals the parachutes from planes and even bombs his own base. Milo does anything he can to make money, feeling no moral obligation to his country or his friends. The degree to which Milo’s behavior is accepted among the men further demonstrates the extent to which they have internalized the free-market capitalist ideas of the United States. They may be annoyed with Milo, but they make no concerted effort to bring down his syndicate. Instead, they accept its existence as a simple fact of life.

A key element of the syndicate, Milo repeats to the men, is that they all own a share. This share is a nebulous, abstract idea. The only time that Milo qualifies the definition of the share is when, near the end of the novel, someone demands an explanation. He writes the word “share” on a piece of paper, revealing that his promise meant nothing. As within a capitalist society itself, the men are promised a share of the profits but they are treated with contempt by the society and the syndicate. Just as Milo exploits the men and sells their safety equipment for his own gain, capitalist society sends them to die, alienated, on meaningless missions. The syndicate’s vapidness also symbolizes this alienation.