I had a very uninspiring day today, so while cleaning up all of my files on my computer, I thought that you guys would possible want to see my writing skills. Here is a research paper about the religion, or lack thereof, in Catch-22 (you'll have to bear with me about the formatting. Sorry MLA!):
The Absence of God in Catch-22: How Characterization Depicts Religion
Religion is one of the most altercated subjects ever. Disagreements cause more than simply an oral debate: violence usually becomes of it. From the concurrent attacks within India to the Crusades of the 11th through 13th centuries, religion has driven people to violent extremes. It is not surprising that Catch-22 targets religion, as the book is full of satiric comedy that targets many of the problems of today, from corrupt bureaucrats to the dehumanization of war. Joseph Heller certainly weaves his own religious preference into his classic book. The characterization of ridiculous characters in Heller’s Catch-22 conveys the belief that God does not exist.
The first incidence in which a character reveals the belief that God does not exist is when Colonel Cathcart abuses religion solely to gain political power, not to benefit those who use religion for emotional aid. Colonel Cathcart, like many of the bureaucrats stationed in Pianosa, is always looking for ways to get attention and get a promotion. He copies an idea that he read in The Saturday Evening Post, thinking that he will get some attention for it: have the chaplain give a group prayer before each mission. However, he asks the chaplain to change his speech to something more uplifting after hearing the last prayer the chaplain gave: “Haven’t you got anything humorous that stays away from … God? I’d like to keep away from the subject of religion altogether if we can” (192). Cathcart obviously does not care about the spirituality of his subordinates. He would never go out of his way just to help one of his men. Instead, Cathcart wants an impressive, tighter bomb pattern during the bomb missions. James Nagel, an Edison Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Georgia, has noted the same:
Cathcart’s logic leads him to an admission that ‘I’d like to keep away from the subject of religion altogether if we can and to the true object of him desires: ‘Why can’t we all pray for something good, like a tighter bomb pattern?’ But the plan for prayers is abandoned altogether when the chaplain reveals that the enlisted men do not have a separate God, as Cathcart had assumed, and that excluding them from prayer meetings might antagonize God and result in even looser bomb patterns. Cathcart concludes ‘the hell with it, then.’ (6)
Although Cathcart does not directly state that he does not believe in God, this scene in the book still reveals the belief that God does not exist because of the depression of Christianity. Government comes before religion in this case, and the way religious prayers are abused in order to gain bureaucratic achievement belittles the words of the Bible, the chaplain, and the entirety of the Christian religion. This scene is an indirect case in which the belief that God does not exist is conveyed in Catch-22, but the following scenario, a day in the life of Yossarian, is much more direct.
The characterization of Yossarian, the novel’s protagonist, also adds to the belief that there is indeed no God. After the terrible incident in which Doc Daneeka tries to prove that he is alive, and after the many deaths of his friends stationed in Pianosa, Yossarian has had enough and expresses his true feelings about God. He calls God a “colossal, immortal blunderer! When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead” (179). It is not shocking to hear Yossarian so frustrated, so disoriented. Yossarian has made it his life in Pianosa to complain, to cheat, and to steal his way through the war, and his targeted attack on God is just one of the many forms of satire that Heller brings about. It is natural for Yossarian to complain about things as idealistic as religion, and he continues to do so in a quarrel between another character and him.
The fight between Yossarian and Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife also conveys the belief that there is no God. Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife comes to Pianosa to visit her husband as well as the other men on the island because of Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s lack of ability to sexually please his spouse. During a trip to visit Yossarian, Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife and Yossarain, both atheists, are debating the God in which they do not believe in. Louis Hasley, a professor the University of Notre Dame for over four decades, summarizes the situation nicely: “[T]he deity is likewise roundly vituperated by Yossarian … [I]n an adulterous visit to Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife (on Thanksgiving!), he argues with her about God” (2). Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife argues that the God she does not believe in is “a good God, a just God, a merciful God” (180). Yossarian, conversely, attacks God much more viciously:
And don’t tell me God works in mysterious ways … There’s nothing so mysterious about it. He’s not working at all. He’s playing. Or else he’s forgotten about us. That’s the kind of God you people talk about—a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed … What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did he ever create pain? (179)
This ferocious attack easily exposes the belief that God does not exist. Yossarian once again exploits the logic of even having a benign God, explaining that if God were truly a benevolent force, he would not have allowed pain and misfortune to exist on this planet.
The chaplain is perhaps the book’s strongest symbol of religion, since he is the one person in Pianosa who does not engage in violent manners, as promoted by the Ten Commandments, and has dedicated his life to Christianity. However, after living about the torturously depressing island Pianosa, the chaplain begins to reconsider his feelings toward Christianity as well as religion as a whole, thus adding to the display of the belief that God does not exist. He begins doubting Christianity when doubting the validity of the Bible, shortly after being bossed around by Colonel Cathcart:
So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak house, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicas. Did it then seem probably, as he once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven? (285)
The violence of the setting and patronization of the chaplain by nearly every character within Catch-22 has worn him down to the point in which he has lost faith in God and the religion he donated his life to The chaplain, as a symbol for God, displays the weakness of the words of God and the Bible. In addition, the chaplain is “described as being as much an embarrassment as Shylock in Shakespeare’s Venice” by Ann Crow, Assistant Professor at Havant College (2). It is an effective means of attack done by Heller in this case: his strongest symbol for religion and God in the novel is also the biggest outsider, the biggest humiliation of all the men about the island.
Once again, the characterization of the ridiculous characters of Catch-22 conveys the belief that God does not exist. Including religion, this book causes the reader to encounter current issues head-on as Heller deviously assaults them. This book sums these topics up very nicely: none of these topics matter when dealing with the reality of real life. Why should the words of one man affect the lives of all of us aboard the sole planet of life in this universe? Why would one man, who created all 6 billion people of Earth, create immoral suffering and pain? The answer lies simply within the plot of the end of the book: one should not yield to flawed issues as these. Avoid the situation and simply move on.
Works Cited
Crow, Anne. "Unlikely Heroes." The English Review Feb. 2005: 23-24. Thomson Gale. Literature Resource Center. Anne Arundel County High Schools, Severna Park. 2 May 2009 .
Hasley, Louis. "Dramatic Tension in Catch-22." The Midwest Quarterly Jan. 1974: 190-97. Thomson Gale. Literature Resource Center. Anne Arundel County High Schools, Severna Park. 2 May 2009 .
Heller, Joseph. Catch-22. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Nagel, James. Biographies of Books: The Compositional Histories of Notable American Writings. Ed. James Barbour and Tom Quirk. Columbia: University of Missouri P, 1996. Thomson Gale. Literature Resource Center. Anne Arundel County High Schools, Severna Park. 2 May 2009 .
Please excuse my inability to take good pictures of fireworks.My pool is over a hundred years old, so it's very, very traditional and conservative. Every year for Independence Day, there is a catered lunch free for all members. Some go to eat on the water, some go to eat by the poolside, some, like me, go to eat at the lifeguard table with all of the teenagers, half of whom are working for the day. 4th of July is generally the busiest day of the year for the pool, and 5-6 guards are on schedule (we typically have 3 guards working at most).
