Blog Post no. 2: Writing style and a little over theme

As a writer, Joseph Heller is very sarcastic and snarky, or at least his characters are. In Catch-22, many times I've had to read over a text multiple times to discern what the meaning of it actually was. For instance, on the ninth page, while describing a minor character, Heller writes that "The Texan turned out to good-natured, generous and likeable. In three days no one could stand him." Little comments like that make this book so humorous and at the same time, so confusing. Not only are the characters incredibly sarcastic (and insane), but they contradict themselves, each other, and the story that it would make anyones head spin. For instance, at one point, a character named Clevinger is being court marshaled, and the dialogue goes something like this:
"No sir." [Clevinger]
"Don't sir me!" [Colonel (no name given)]
"Yes, sir." [Clevinger]
"And say 'sir' when you don't!" [Major Metcalf]
"Goddamn it Metcalf, you're an idiot!" [same Colonel] (80)

In spite of being an incredibly hilarious scene that had me wheezing, it was at first very confusing to read. Heller writes with an abundance of dialogue, and at times it gets hard to trace each person's temperament and/or motivation while four people are conversing and interrupting each other. I think that it could be Heller trying to say that the military is full of fools that can't carry a thought between them, because it certainly seems that way while reading about the military leadership in this book. Even more than their ineptitude, the leadership in this book resents, and to some extent even hates their subordinates. A particularly vile character, Captain Black is giddy when he learns that the men are going to be sent on a very dangerous mission, and is crestfallen when it's aborted. When he learns about the mission, he takes glee in spreading the horrible information, "'That's right, you bastards, Bologna,' he kept repeating to all the bombardiers who inquired incredulously if they were really going to Bologna. 'Ha! Ha! Ha! Eat your livers, you bastards. This time you're really in for it'" (111).

This is actually a re-occouring theme within the book, I can't pin it down exactly, but I feel that it's described best by Clevinger (the same one who was court marshaled above) after his court marshal; "These three men who hated him spoke his language and wore his uniform, but he saw their loveless faces set immutably into cramped, mean lines of hostility and understood instantly that nowhere in the world, not in all the fascist tanks or planes or submarines, not in the bunkers behind the machine guns or the mortars or behind the blowing flame throwers, not even among the expert gunners of the crack Hermann Goering Antiaircraft Division or among the grisly connivers in all the beer halls in Munich and everywhere else, were there men who hated him more" (81). After writing that, it's actually pretty obvious that he means that his enemy truly isn't his enemy. The men aiming their antiaircraft guns at his plane don't hate him as much as the men who are his superiors.