Blog Post 4

Throughout these posts, I've been tracking morality and bureaucratic idiocy. Upon finishing this fun book, I realized that more than idiocy, it's the distortion and manipulation of justice. The military convicts an innocent man, Clevinger, for doing nothing whatsoever. They elect not to punish Milo Minderbinder because of the huge profit that he made by bombing his own base. They keep raising the number of missions with no reason. At first, I thought that it was Joseph Heller's way of poking fun at the military, which he served in. However once I started really looking at it, I found that it was more than just about the guys in control being idiots. The trial of Clevinger and the ever rising number of missions are the best examples of why it's injustice more than idiocy, because there isn't really a reason, just hatred. As the novel progresses, it gets worse and worse for the men, beginning with Clevinger who is punished for 'being a smart guy' and 'listening to classical music', to Chaplain Tappman, who is accused and punished for "stealing a plum tomato" (which was actually given to him by his accuser); when he denies his guilt, he is quickly asked "why would we be questioning you if you weren't guilty?" This distortion of justice helps to show the powerlessness of the enlisted men against the 'higher-ups'.
I was looking up some things about the author Joseph Heller, when I stumbled on to an interesting sentence that talked about the motif of miscommunication. When I saw that, I had a brief "HOLY CRAP IT WAS THERE THE WHOLE TIME" moment. I then went back through the novel and looked at all the times when miscommunication was a factor. It started at the beginning when Yossarian is assigned to sensor letters and starts crossing out things that have no purpose. When I first read this, I thought that it was just introducing us to Yossarian's particular brand of madness, but with the 'looking for miscommunication' lens on, I saw that it was him hindering communication between the soldiers and their lives back home. Another example is the confusing ex-PFC Wintergreen. He works in intelligence and muddles with the operations and designs of the Generals over him by simply not relaying information, or even prank-calling them. Major Major ends up signing the same fake name that Yossarian did when signing official documents, making me wonder if Washington Irving/Irving Washington means something else. When in the nose of his plane, Yossarian cannot, no matter how hard he tries, tell Aarfy to leave the nose in spite of how often he yells it and how obvious his body language is. Expanding the 'miscommunication' motif to 'language' allows me to group in the deceit of the commanding officers when they keep raising the minimum number of missions. I was trying to put a pin in what this could mean for a while, I looked through Foster to see if he had anything to say on the subject of communication (or lack thereof), but he wasn't in an obligatory mood. What I've been able to extrapolate from this is that language isn't really important, especially when his friend is bleeding out in the back of a plane, all he can say is "there, there", because words just don't cut it.
When I was reading, I had to often stop and remind myself that nothing is written for no reason. As Foster wrote, 'you cannot notice the paperboy without the author giving him enough detail to be noticed' or something along those lines. I had to read the chapter containing the trial of clevinger about five times before I truly understood it. I 'fondled every detail' like Nabokov instructed, and I realized that as the multiple Colonels and Lieutenants and Majors are yelling at Clevinger, they begin to act like Hyenas, at one point even saying "I just can't wait to rip your stinking, cowardly body apart limb from limb". Listening to Flannery O'Connor, I made note of minor characters in this story (there are so many characters) and was justly rewarded when every single one of them was mentioned at a later point in the novel and had their story expanded upon, sometimes becoming major characters themselves.
I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to be entertained and at the same time have their close reading skills put to the test. It's quite ridiculous most of the time, yet still manages to impart very real themes without breaking that sense of surreal ridiculousness, and it really is quite unique and special.