Catch 22 Comparison Paper

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller is a complex and intricate novel. Heller uses many themes, does not have the story line in chronological order and often uses irony in his descriptions. Many of the themes can be compared to other literature. One of the themes that can be compared is fear in war. The idea is that the evils and cruelty of war can make a grown man go back into a "fetal" state. This can be seen in The Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell and can be compared to the metaphor used in chapter five of Catch 22. In this chapter Yossarian talks about the tight crawl space which led to the plexiglass bombardier’s compartment.

This can be looked at as the passageway to fear. Every time Yossarian climbs down he is entering a womb. Yossarian is depicted as being scared and that is why he goes down in the "womb" to feel secure. There, he is nothing but a scared child in a mother’s womb wanting to come out but he can’t. This can also be said for the character in the Ball Turret Gunner. The first lines the speaker says that he has had no choice but to be in this position of being in the belly of the bombardiers compartment. There he too feels as if he is nothing but a small child in his mother womb. He describes his helplessness when he says that he is "six miles form earth and loosed from the dream of life". However, the speaker in Ball Turret gunner goes to a further extent when he says that after the "nightmare", and he is killed and washed out of the compartment with a hose.

Another theme addressed in Catch 22 was religion. In Catch 22 the characters questioned whether or not God was real. Many points are brought out by this question. One question is if God loves us so much, why are human lives valued so little? This is seen with the disappearance of Clevinger. It is apparent when Yossarian can’t believe the news and even makes up the story in his mind that the men in that flight just went AWOL instead of them being dead. When he went to tell ex-PFC Wintergreen his theory though, he was pushed away. It was if he didn’t care to think about the situation. This shows the lack of respect for another human life. This can also be seen in SlaughterHouse V. One of the things Billy thinks about is the value of human life. The question he asks is how can God not value the life of people and let them be slaughtered. What he was referring too was the concentration camps that he was in and saw people die at and the bombing of Dresden where many people lost their lives. Billy Pilgrim felt that if God loved his people that he wouldn’t allow this to happen. So therefore there would be no God because the God that people have learned about, loves everyone and would certainly not allow harm to anyone. This definitely takes aim at religion and basically sees how much faith a person might have in God despite the evil he sees around him. Another take on it is that why does God want people to be miserable. This is seen by Doc Daneeka constantly asking "Why Me". She talks about Hungry Joe and how Yossarian is constantly worries about Hungry Joe. She starts out by sarcastically saying that she has no stress. She says that she knows there is a war and there are people suffering. She can’t figure out why she has to be one of them. Another theme and imagery used in Catch 22 is the prison imagery. The hospital seems to be prison at first but a good prison if there was ever such a thing. In the beginning of the novel it is made clear that the world has tow parts, life in the hospital and life outside fighting in the war. Many see the hospital as a safe haven where they get to eat what they want and don’t have to worry about being killed. This is the perspective that Yossarian has. Clevinger and many others in the hospital have another idea of this. They thought that Yossarian and Dunbar, the other person that shared the same perspective as Yossarian, were crazy. Yossarian brought up the point that in the hospital he was safe and outside there was nothing but war. He then went on further to say "They’re trying to kill me". As seen, Yossarian finds the hospital a much better place than the war. It protects him from the evils of the outside world. The same is seen in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The ward is essentially a prison that is good for its inmates. At the beginning of the novel the characters are happy where they are. This is not because they are being treated with respect there but because they have been "whipped" or in their case "shocked" into submission. I think that in a way the characters in Catch 22 were taught that patriotism and fighting for their country was more important than their own health. So in a sense they were forced into submission. So they wanted out of their prison while the people in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s nest wanted to stay in. Both because of the influence of people in power. In both cases though the outside world is evil. In Catch 22 the evil is very evident. War is going on and like Yossarian pointed out the enemy is out to kill. So no matter how patriotic Clevingers tear filled speech was death is death and nobody wants that fate. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest McMurphy tries to make the outside world seem so good which is true to the reader because of the reader’s knowledge of the evil plans that Nurse Ratchet has in store. However, the characters are not mentally ready for the outside world. They have been locked up for so long in the "prison" that they could not handle the evils presented to them by other people. Nurse Ratchet has taken away their self-confidence and they can not deal with other people criticism. In the part of the novel when McMurphy takes them on a fishing trip, it is seen how fragile they are. In the bait shop they are torn down buy the loafers there and they really loose confidence. The prison has impacted them and will leave a permanent scar mentally.