Catch22 Essay Research Paper Through religion philosophy

Catch-22 Essay, Research Paper

Through religion, philosophy, science, art, and mathematics, humans quest for an Absolute. They seek to find a “still point” where conflict cannot burgeon and principles may converge to an essential Truth. However, in Catch-22 Joseph Heller suggests the unsettling idea that Life holds no pervasive absolute because in actuality Life is the continual clash of absolutes. Through the main character Yossarian, one is able to understand how the individual creates a world applicable only to himself; how when these differing worlds are collectively applied, the natural course of society is to be chaotic and Life, paradoxical; and how together these concepts emulate the conflict modernist minds had within a postmodernist society.

Since the individuals within the society of Catch-22 create worlds where each perpetuates his idea of what is right and wrong, the concept of a prevailing Absolute is nonexistent. Their worlds which encase what they believe as the only belief follows the ideas of Existentialism that states since oneself is the only frame of reference to what may be True, the only valid absolute is one created by the individual. For example, Colonel Cathcart’s continual increase in the number of missions the soldiers must complete is an endless frustration that adds to the impermanence of the soldiers’ stay in the Army. However, to power-hungry Cathcart the apathy he expresses for the lives of his soldiers is perfectly acceptable because within his own sphere his concern is increasing his rank by any means. “[He] was a . . . dedicated military tactician who calculated day and night in service of himself” (198). Thus, Cathcart’s actions have two very unlike implications in his and the soldiers’ spheres. Similarly, Milo Minderbinder’s construction of a syndicate that serves his increasing desire to make profit provides him with a reason for his existence–essentially his own absolute. Milo even tries imposing on the soldiers his belief that M & M Enterprises is the only admirable and desirable way to governs one’s life. However, the duplicitous motives behind Milo’s syndicate become evident as he continues to jeopardize the army’s best interests for his own. When Milo agrees to attacking a German bridge for America and defending the same German bridge for Germany for the sake of “private enterprise . . . and fantastic profit” (265), he risks shattering the expansive world his actions effect for the sake of keeping his world together because to him his world is all that is worth acting upon. “[He] just saw a wonderful opportunity to make some profit out of the mission, and . . . took it” (265). Since both Cathcart and Milo choose to follow their own desires, confusion grows between the subordinates and powers of the society because no man tries to work in accordance with another; thus no man is able to believe in an Absolute true not only to himself, but society. Thus, this conflict among individuals’ purported absolutes seems to be an endless Catch-22. One can never satisfy the following statement: what one sees true to himself is true to those around him. The catch seems to illustrate the differentiation between simply believing in an Absolute than to applying it to Life–where it shall always be in the face of contradiction.

As Yossarian’s sees the effect of clashing spheres within the army, he realizes that the absolutes individuals choose to believe make contradiction an inherent a part of society and life. As a result, Yossarian asks “the ultimate question as to the conditions of life” that Friedrich Nietzsche’s put forth in the The Gay Science–”To what extent can truth endure incorporation?” When Yossarian travels to the Eternal City, his question gongs louder as he sees his life in the army mirrored by life in the Eternal City where “every victim was a culprit, every culprit a victim” (416). Yossarian’s thrust into a reality of human suffering brings about his feeling of betrayal for believing that an essential Truth existed. His hopes that the world outside the army would redeem his spirit and reinstill his faith in Life dissolves into Nothingness. Instead, the images of a dilapidated Rome, an old man kicking his dog, and sick, starved children make Life appear evermore stark and dismal to Yossarian. “His spirit was sick” (427). When an elderly woman dolefully tells Yossarian of the girls chased onto the street by soldiers monotonously repeating, “Catch-22″, he is taken aback (417). It dawns on Yossarian how Catch-22 is also an Absolute created and believed by the individual. Although it is not a tangible law, he understands that because so many believe in Catch-22’s existence that that is enough to make it absolute within the individual’s mind. However, the ultimate irony in the Absolute these individuals have chosen to believe is that Catch-22 itself is a statement that Life is an endless confrontation with Paradox. Yossarian’s understanding that within society there is no unifying Absolute is similar to physicists gradual understanding of the quantum theory that showed the physical world was more chaotic than ever presumed. The theory according to Paul Davies’ Other World, “shows that reality, inasmuch as it has any meaning at all, is not a property of the external world on its own but it intimately bound up with our perception of the world.” Thus, the quantum theory produced a doubt in the Absolutes created in science