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The Barretts in Hadley »

I have to admit that I took a break about a quarter of the way through because it was taking me a while to get the hang of how to read this book. It seems at first like a string of humorous anecdotes connected together loosely by the main character, Yossarian. Though there are chapter breaks usually named after a character, the story will jump off and follow a new character unexpectedly mid-chapter. There are a lot of characters and it's hard to tell how important they are. I couldn't keep my Dobbs and my Dunbars straight for a while. Though I laughed out loud quite a bit, I was not sure where this was all headed.

I'm quite glad I stuck with it and came back after a short break though. Heller examines the nature of war via a bombing squadron stationed in the Mediterranean during WWII but it is still very relevant for today's war. It is equal parts hilarious and horrifying. The humor reminded me a lot of Monty Python because it seems at first to be ridiculous to a level of stupidity but a little further along you realize it's really not that far from reality at all. Just a slight distortion. The numerous catch-22s in the story themselves are played for laughs but are really proper satires of military bureacracy. The characters and their comical traits are not that far removed from reality. I can almost imagine someone like Milo using his time in the service to build a capitalist venture that leads him to actually do business with the enemy and to attack his own squadron. Or Major Major who posts a guard at his door and crawls out the window to avoid having to deal with any responsiblities. Or Yossarian himself who is always trying to get into the hospital so that he can be discharged and saved from the risk of death at the hands of people he doesn't even know.

As funny as the book is, it's also quite tragic. Snowden's death continues to haunt me in the same way it haunts Yossarian. The scene repeats to me over and over again.

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Posted at September 8, 2004 03:37 PM