The chaos of the human mind is something we've always been fascinated with. Many great works of fiction were experiments with the damaged brain after it was subjected to war trauma or some other psychological battle for survival. Herein lies a narrator who is trying desperately to tell us some key thing that happened or will happen but cannot face the actuality of it and so he rejects it and instead tell us everything else inside his warped mind, every anxiety, every random memory, in hopes that we will piece it together and maybe even save him.
Yosarian is someone i care about. He is scared. He is severely flawed, but he's the only one who seems to be honest about what's going on. He hates being a captain of war and wants nothing more than to go home. He is also trying to get laid. Rambling, paranoid, prankster, hopeless, he is all we have.
The meaning of catch 22 is found several hundred pages of dialogue in, where Yosarian and Doc Daneeka discuss "the catch". The only way to get out of flying more missions is to be declared mentally unfit to fly by the doctor. To be declared unfit however, one must request a psychological evaluation, but only a sane person would request to get out of flying more dangerous missions. The cycle of regulations spin tauntingly out of reach as the number of missions each cadet is mandated to fly before being honorably discharged steadily increases. As the invisible vice tightens, Yosarian's frantic paranoia that someone is trying to kill him actually mimics true insanity, all the while, the destinations of warfare create chaos and a mounting body count.
I must confess that the entire story, from page one, is a rising climatic suspense. Every detail is thrown at the reader, a dozen names intermixed with a dozen pagelong descriptions of each character's appearance, rank, habits, spouse, and peculiarities. Actually plot advances are unchronologically splashed with confessions, youthful memories, paranoid delusions, and fixations. With his pain that borders on euphoria, Yosarian must reach his epiphany of recollection and give the whole thing meaning. Nearing the last few chapters, I had my doubts as to whether or not he'd make it through to resolution. Overall, I'd give Catch 22 four out of five stars. I do strongly recommend reading it if you have not already. It was a challenging read, I admit, not altogether enjoyable, yet fascinating nonetheless. I withhold one star, not for the lack of it being a masterpiece or even an American classic, but in respects to the payoff at the end, the very, very end, which was remarkable but fleeting with an exasperated conclusion of utterly used up human persistence.
