An Analysis Of Milo Minderbinder's Catch-22

One notable feature of both novels is the frequent presence of bizarrely ironic situations. In Catch-22, Milo Minderbinder embodies a kind of bizarre capitalistic figure. War represents potential for monetary gain to Milo, who sells products all over the world, always managing to turn a profit despite selling things for less than he pays for them: “Yossarian still didn't understand either how Milo could buy eggs in Malta for seven cents apiece and sell them at a profit in Pianosa for five cents,” (CITATION). He also convinces soldiers to buy from him by saying everyone gets a share via the syndicate: "You'll be paying the money to yourself when you buy from the syndicate, since you'll own a share, so you'll really be getting everything you

buy for nothing. Doesn't that make sense?" (CITATION). Milo’s ridiculous actions seem to be a critique of capitalism’s sinister side, satirizing the capitalistic practice of always hunting for profits. But this can also be broadened to be a critique of war as a whole. Milo appears to have no particular allegiance to any country or group; he aligns himself with whomever will allow him to profit.

Milo was not only the Vice-Shah or Oran, as it turned out, but also the Caliph of Baghdad, the Imam of Damascus, and the Sheik of Araby. Milo was the corn god, the rain god and the rice god… Everywhere they touched he was acclaimed with honor, and it was one triumphal ovation after another for him in city after city. (CITATION).

Milo’s actions suggest that war is something that can be profited from. His ruthless capitalism is further illustrated when he tries to unload his Egyptian cotton by covering it in chocolate and serving it to the men, and, most significantly, when he forms a deal with the Germans to bomb his own squadron.
But ultimately, Catch-22 is the weapon of the powerful, such as the military bureaucracy or Milo’s syndicate, against the powerless, such as ordinary civilians or the enlisted men.

It depends primarily on the lack of ability or willingness to challenge its logic. With the “repressive state apparatus” and its underlying threat of violence there is no room for protest, and the ultimate description of catch-22 reveals itself as “Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing.” Heller reaches for the grotesque and absurd in order to prove his point:

Similarly, Slaughterhouse-Five runs rampant with absurdly ironic scenarios. Some of the best examples of the novel's ironic black humor are the absurd plights of the hobo and Edgar Derby. A 40-year-old former hobo is captured along with Billy Pilgrim and the other soldiers. Despite the poor conditions, he continuously assures the others that things "ain't so bad,” that he’s been hungrier, and that he’s been in far worse places. Despite his seeming optimism, though, he dies after nine days:

On the eighth day, the forty-year-old hobo said to Billy, 'This ain't bad. I can be

comfortable anywhere.'

'You can?' said Billy.

On the ninth day, the hobo died. So it goes. His last words were, 'You think this is bad? This ain't bad.’

(CITATION).

The hobo is absurdly optimistic about his situation until the very end. Similar situational irony is also shown in the fate of Edgar Derby. He survives the bombing of Dresden, but he does not survive what follows. Having stolen a teapot, a minuscule item indeed, he is executed for the offense: “Somewhere in there the poor old high school teacher, Edgar Derby, was caught with a teapot he had taken from the catacombs. He was arrested for plundering. He was tried and shot. So it goes,” (CITATION). For Vonnegut, the absurd irony of the hobo's and Derby's situations magnifies the injustices of war, which often lead to the demise of individuals and their untimely deaths in absurd circumstances.

III. Exaggerated Characters: Foolishness

Billy, the protagonist of Slaughterhouse-Five, is often portrayed as a complete fool, both physically and mentally. His ridiculous appearance and incompetence make it seem like he almost does not care whether he lives or dies: “Billy was preposterous … He had no helmet, no overcoat, no weapon, and no boots. On his feet were cheap, low-cut civilian shoes which he had bought for his father's funeral. Billy had lost a heel, which made him bob up-and-down-up-and-down. The involuntary dancing, up-and-down, up-and-down, made his hip joints sore,” (CITATION). This, in turn, reflects on the ridiculousness of war, and how many young soldiers entered the war unprepared for the devastation they would face. The imagery of “dancing” also references the subtitle of the book, "A Duty-Dance With Death.” Billy Pilgrim, with his poor physique and lack of proper equipment, is utterly unprepared for the war into which he has been thrust. Yet despite this, he still must follow orders. His “dance with death” has begun, and there is nothing that he can do about it- it is involuntary. Though it is Billy who looks like a fool, his total lack of preparedness for war reflects more poorly on whomever deployed him to Germany than Billy himself. Billy “didn't look like a soldier at all. He looked like a filthy flamingo,” (CITATION). His ridiculous appearance is contradictory to the honorable image of a solider that one might picture. This is further emphasized by the fact that “[t]he Germans found him to be one of the most screamingly funny things they had seen in all of World War II. They laughed and laughed,” (CITATION). Although war seems to be one of the furthest things from a laughing matter that one could possibly think of, Billy makes such a complete fool of himself that the Germans cannot help but mock him.

Billy is also quite foolish in his actions. When Billy is first shot at, “Billy stood there politely, giving the marksman another chance. It was his addled understanding of the rules of warfare that the marksman should be given a second chance,” (CITATION). He is so laughably naive and his “understanding” of the rules of warfare are so poor that attempts to give the marksman another chance to try to kill him. Billy wants to what is right or just, but he is clearly so confused and mixed-up that he has no idea what that might mean.

Similarly, nearly all the characters in Catch-22 act in ways that seem insane or foolish- “crazy” is a word that is tossed around quite frequently in the novel. Yossarian, the protagonist of Catch-22, is described in such a way that one can never fully understand whether he is the most sane or insane character; Dr. Stubbs says of him that “that crazy bastard may be the only sane one left,” (CITATION). Keeping with this idea, Yossarian may be the only one who recognizes the madness of everyone else fighting in the war: “Outside the hospital the war was still going on. Men went mad and were rewarded with medals. All over the world, boys on every side of the bomb line were laying down their young lives for what they had been told was their country, and no one seemed to mind, least of all the boys who were laying down their young lives,” (CITATION). It is clearly absurd that men would lay down their lives so casually, and be rewarded for essentially going insane. This illustrates how young lives are being taken as a result of the war, and how the influence of notions such as “your country” and cultural bodies causes them to do so willingly.

“Yossarian went about his business with no clothes on all the rest of that day and was still naked late the next morning when Milo, after hunting everywhere else, finally found him sitting up a tree a small distance in back of the quaint little military cemetery at which Snowden was being buried,” (CITATION).

"They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.
"No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.
"Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.
"They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone."
"And what difference does that make?" (CITATION).

At first, Yossarian appears paranoid. He accurately notices that people are trying to kill him, yet that seems expected of the enemy. His observations seem a bit ridiculous, and it is foolish that Taken out of the context of war, Yossarian's logic would be perfectly rational. This, then, points to the absurdity and horror of war itself.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are characters such as Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren, the joint squadron operations officers who “enjoyed flying combat missions and begged nothing more of life and Colonel Cathcart than the opportunity to continue flying them. […] Nothing so wonderful as war had ever happened to them before; and they were afraid it might never happen to them again,” (CITATION). As is implied elsewhere in Heller’s logic, the soldiers who willingly risk their lives by flying combat missions are the ones who are truly crazy. These soldiers love what every man fears – combat missions. This passage is funny, also, because of the disparity between the men's docile appearances and their bloodlust for war.

IV. Contradictory Settings

Another noted feature of the two novels is their odd settings. Catch-22 is set on the small Italian island of Pianosa, which is in fact a real place. Yet Heller tells readers directly that Pianosa is too small to accommodate all the action that takes place in the novel: “The island of Pianosa lies in the Mediterranean Sea eight miles south of Elba. It is very small and obviously could not accommodate all of the actions described. Like the setting, the characters, too, are fictitious,” (CITATION). While it is not uncommon for writers to take literary license in creating their settings, this choice is significant since it first introduces the self-defeating logic of Catch-22. This reduction in realism suggest that action are not focus of novel- the core is the protest against war and its system. The ironic tone of the narrative “is apparent even in the disclaimer, removing the reader from any illusions of realist fiction before the novel has even begun,” (Aanensen 27).

The various settings of Slaughterhouse-Five are a bit more obviously strange. The namesake of the novel, a former slaughterhouse, is used as a prison for Billy and the other POWS. “The parade pranced, staggered and reeled to the gate of the Dresden slaughterhouse, and then it went inside. The slaughterhouse wasn't a busy place any more. Almost all the hooved animals in Germany had been killed and eaten and excreted by human beings, mostly soldiers. So it goes,“ (CITATION).

Ironically, Americans held in slaughterhouse are only survivors of Dresden.
2. The metafictional nature of the novel along with the opening quote “All this happened, more or less” further blurs the line between truth and fiction

V. “Unstuck In Time”: Non-Linear Narratives

Another notable feature of the two novels, besides their content, are their similar structures. Both works have non-linear narratives, jumping back and forth between the “present,” past, and even future. This throws the reader off and further adds to the absurd situations that are presented. These structures further illustrate the futility of war- even time, which is generally thought to be a constant, always moving forward, is disjointed, showing the disorder that war creates. In Catch-22, the narrative is not presented in chronological order; instead, it is presented through a series of fragmented events. The novel is written in the past tense, and is primarily structured as a series of flashbacks, so that “most of the people it revolves around are already dead, and these deaths, along with the number of missions needed for rotation, often grotesquely serve as the point of reference in time,” (Aanensen 27). This causes the readers to be “shocked when [characters] finally do disappear, one by one, each with his own mock individuality, each to his utterly depersonalizing fate,” (Aanensen 27). The structure of the narrative causes it to become a series of repetitions of conversations and events. This sense of “déjà-vu” is even referenced multiple times in the novel:

For a few precarious seconds, the chaplain tingled with a weird, occult sensation of having experienced the identical situation before in some prior time or existence. He endeavored to trap and nourish the impression in order to predict, and perhaps even control, what incident would occur next, but the afatus melted away unproductively, as he had known beforehand it would. Déjà vu. (CITATION)

This idea of déjà vu and the repetition of certain events throughout the narrative contributes to the sense of absurdity; things are repeated over and over and readers are informed of events before they actually “happen” in the chronology of the story. According to Aanensen, the story is actually “a series of variations on and unchanging situation” (28), namely Yossarian’s attempts to escape the war and the impending death it signifies. The absurdity of there being little to no progress in plot chapter after chapter further emphasizes the hopelessness of the war and of Yossarian’s plight; as time moves backward and forward the number of missions required and the death toll also oscillate up and down. The déjà vu and lack of progress also give rise to the idea that war can and will happen over and over again; the occurrence of wars could just be history repeating itself.

In keeping with the contradictory nature of Catch-22, serious events are often juxtaposed by comic scenes interspersed at key moments. These episodes of comedy occur “chapter after chapter, almost always couched in rampant unrealism. But the unrealism, the incongruities, do not obscure Heller’s insistence on the unrelenting truth of the irrationality, the inhumanity, of war,” (Aanensen 26). For instance, the death of Snowden is replayed numerous times throughout the novel, with the first time being merely a cursory glance at his death, and the last being described in graphic detail. *********

In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut takes the idea of a disjointed timeline even further. Billy Pilgrim has become “unstuck in time,” allowing him to visit any point of his life, past or present, at any given moment: “Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren't necessarily fun. He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next,” (CITATION). Not coincidentally, Billy becomes unstuck in time “while the Second World War was in progress,” (CITATION).
When Billy inquires as to why he was captured by the Tramalfadorians, he is given the blunt response: “Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs
trapped in amber? … Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why,” (CITATION). ****** These sentiments of the absence of free will or the inevitability of war is presented early on in the book: “Do you know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books? . . . I say, 'Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?” (CITATION).

Vonnegut’s usage of short paragraphs that do not follow a direct timeline but instead jump forward and backward in time coincide with the Tramalfadorian belief that one can experience all moments at any given time because time itself is not linear. For Billy Pilgrim, this means never knowing when he will wind up, for he can “[walk] through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941,” (CITATION). This also that he can never escape reliving the trauma of Dresden. Similarly to the way that the narrative of Catch-22 does, the narrative of Slaughterhouse-Five tends to divulge information about certain events before they have occurred in the narrative. For instance, the death of Edgar Derby is initially mentioned before it occurs in the chronology of Billy’s memory: “Derby's son would survive the war. Derby wouldn't. That good body of his would be filled with holes by a firing squad in Dresden in sixty-eight days,” (CITATION). Yet Billy does not visit moment in time and until much later in the novel.

Edelstein writes that Billy’s ability to time travel “provides him with a hard-won escape from the horrors of death – both the violent death of Dresden and the natural death that he faces in the future – and from the moral responsibility of having to do something about the war,” (133).

“Vonnegut’s restructuring of the chronological sequence prolongs our confusion about what is going on until the end of the novel and allows us to see in a single moment of insight – the scene in the bookstore – exactly what Dresden has done to Billy,” (132).