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Matea Peček

Jasna Poljak Rehlicki, PhD

American War Literature

November 15, 2017

The Real Enemy in Heller’s Catch-22

Second World War, like any other war, is seen as something gruesome and sad;

millions of people killed over the interests of the ruling. Trying to portray these horrors, war

literature is based mostly on criticism of the war itself, and what is special about Catch 22 is

that Joseph Heller is careful not to criticize the war, but the government. What typically

comes to mind when mentioning war, is an enemy- there is no warfare without an enemy. The

aim of this paper is to try and prove the real enemy in the novel.

Catch 22 is a novel with, obviously, a catch. American soldiers are fighting in Europe,

a war of epic proportions is well under its way, and everybody expects the Germans to show

up. The catch of the novel is that the supposed opponent is almost not even mentioned, let

alone seen. What troubles these soldiers the most is the change of rules established by their

commanders. All of the men are desperate to go home, and the rule seems simple - all they

need to do is fly a certain number of missions. A huge absurdity hides in that agreement, for

every time someone reaches the number, it instantly gets increased. Considering that, soldiers

of this novel are nothing other than pieces of a big machine used by the government over and

over again until they break down and get replaced. Mental damage caused by exploitation can

be seen in the character of Hungry Joe, who reached the required number of missions a few

times and was not let home: “Hungry Joe did have fifty missions, but they were no help”

(Heller 43). That led to him having nightmares, what may be his subconscious telling him he
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is not free yet, and the nightmares stopped only when the number of required missions was

raised again. The biggest catch of the novel, the so called Catch-22, lies in the inability to

avoid war, it represents a made up rule which persuades the soldiers to obey the government.

Yossarian, the protagonist, does not believe in such an abstract thing, but he sees the cul-de-

sac and admires the catch: “Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of

this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle” (Heller 39). Another important

character is Colonel Cathcart, who embodies all the bad qualities of the bureaucracy, such as

indecisiveness, dishonesty, and incompetence: “He was complacent and insecure, daring in

the administrative stratagems he employed to bring himself to the attention of his superiors

and craven in his concern that his schemes might all backfire” (Heller 152). With absence of

logic, he treats his men like dispensable pieces of machinery; failing to see them as human

beings- he pushes them beyond their capacities by assigning more missions all the time. In

such a corrupted world, soldiers, who should have been finished with their missions a long

time ago, died trying to fulfill their duties.

To sum up, an enemy does not need to be somebody standing on the other side of the

line, but right next to you. The novel depicts the corrupted government as the real enemy;

what obliged these men to continue their missions was a moral principle, serving their country

even if that same country was using them as tools. War is a prison for anyone who decides to

join, and there is no way out of it.

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Work cited

Heller, Joseph, Catch-22, Simon&Schuster, 1996