Source: https://www.yellowdogbookshop.com/books/334n9xg6nrx1w0lsbqrtmd8in3spcz
<Catch-22 Book Report>
<Catch-22> is a novel that illustrates the idiocy of WWII. The story’s main theme is showing how useless and foolish war was by a rule, Catch-22. To summarize, John Yossarin was the captain of a US air force bombardier at an island, Pianosa, Italy. He was known as a ‘war hero’, but he did not see the point of the missions he accomplished. He wanted to get out of the battlefields and at least be grounded, but he could not because of a rule. Catch-22 is the rule in the military he is stationed at that says if a soldier is insane, he can be grounded. However, when the soldier asks for the grounding, it would prove that he was in a right state, since only mentally-stable people would not want to go to battlefields. Therefore, Yossarin could not escape the battle unless he went completely insane.
Later, in the conclusion, Yossarin was nearly helpless because all the other soldiers he used to fight with and were friendly with got killed. Then, he heard that his old roommate, Orr, had escaped from the military to Sweden. Yossarian decides to move to Sweden, too. The book ends with a cliffhanger, not telling whether Yossarin got to Sweden safely or not.
Through reading this book, I got to think again whether war was really a useless, foolish, idiot-like thing to do. I came to the conclusion that even if I do agree that it is foolish of countries to fight over instead of compromising, I do not think that it was useless. In my opinion, fighting teaches people lessons, too. For example, WWII taught Japan what they did not see: that their emperor was not a brilliant, powerful, perfect person they could ever find throughout history. It also taught people that war is terrible, and something like WWII, and the events that had happened in WWII, such as the atomic bomb must never happen again.
To analyze the book, Catch-22 symbolizes a paradox where there is no solution to a problem and it keeps the person frustrated because of the circulating situations. This is a reflection of what Joseph Heller, the author, thought about war. It emphasizes how frustrating, useless, and irrational wars were in the author’s perspective.
To conclude, the book was really interesting, but one of the hard parts was to list the events that had happened in the book. At first, I thought it was because of a lack of organization; the plotline was not in a normal, chronological order. However, according to research, it was intentional– the way of the listing of events– because the author wanted the book to explain more about the complexity and absurdity of war. To be honest, it was a great way to express it, and I realized how war might have looked to civilians who went through it, and it would be completely different to an outsider who never really experienced war first-hand, like myself.
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