Yet, insanity is merely a ramification of other by-products of war, paranoia for example generates madness.
Satire possesses this marvellous ability in being able to manipulate our response, It purposefully implements a truth in each laugh, operating like an injection almost, for the exerted force of comedy drives the exaltation of realism.
In the same way Wilfrid Owen uses an unprecedented shout to capture a race against time in Dulce Et Decorum Est ‘Gas, GAS, quick boys, an ecstasy of fumbling, fitting the clumsy helmets just in time’, Heller can portray madness using a similar backdrop ‘ I See everything twice!, A nurse screamed and an orderly fainted, Doctors came running up..with needles, lights, tubes..and oscillating metal lines..there was not enough of the patient to go round’.
The paradoxical co-existence of irregularity and regularity in Catch 22 gives aberrance this kind of inverted normality. ‘Hungry Joe settled down into a normal state of terror with a smile of relief’. ‘It was good when Hungry Joe looked bad and terrible when he looked good’.
Heller imprisons the identity of morality and re-instates it into functioning with decadence to become acceptable ‘A world boiling with chaos in which everything was in proper order’.
Inversion is an element that dominates and connects both writers, whether it be in a despondent, rather dejected manner ‘carnage incomparable and human squander, rucked too thick for men’s extrication’, in Owen’s Mental cases, which focuses on war being the predominant killer. Hope is visualised as a ‘lost future’. He uses the past to kill the future. Bathos and nostalgia crave our emotional sympathy towards these victims. The reality of war involuntarily forces us into disconnecting the potential world of ‘girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim’ in the old days’ from the military world of’ before he threw his knees’. The past and future simultaneously work together to condense.
However to perhaps fully appreciate Owen’s depiction of how war savagely transmogrifies the soldiers’ thoughts into brutal combat, one only needs to compare this to the transpositions allocated in Catch 22 ‘That would contribute to the prestige of his position and increase his striking power in the war he declared against General Dreedle..the future looked wonderful and General Peckem contemplated his bright new colonel enchantedly with an effulgent smile’. This forces us to value the importance of the purity of natural human sentiment against programmed human emotion.
The authority figures in Hellers novel become almost robotic. Analyse Milo’s behaviour at the funeral of Snowden for instance ‘ I can’t watch it’ he cried, ‘ I can’t sit and watch while those mess halls let MY syndicate die.
The bureaucracy’s dependency on egotism and hierarchy becomes almost like that ‘injected drug for their bodies pains’ that Wilfrid Owen implies in Spring Offensive.
Their natural opportunistic instinct clouds them, keeping them subconscious and unable to comprehend the reality of war. Colonel Korn defines their purpose ‘Everyone teaches us to aspire to higher things, a general is higher then a colonel’.
These words confirm the feeling of negligence shared amongst many authority figures, in a paradoxical way I suppose the bureaucracy are as keen to avoid war as Yossarian is ‘We all have jobs to do. My job is to unload these Zippo lighters’.
Yossarian insists that ‘The enemy is anyone who is going to get you killed’. These words shatter convention. Their truth and universality gives them the freedom from the peripheries that this insane novel evokes but they could just as easily offer themselves as a ‘jigsaw piece’ to fit inside Wilfrid Owens Spring Offensive, for example and his attempts to attenuate the gap between falsehood and realism.
Yossarian’s absence of faith and reliance in his own squadron isolates him into believing ‘They are trying to kill me…everyone of them’. Heller purposeful lack of definition provides protracted scope to the answer. An answer that could lie within the words of Ex-PFC Wintergreen ‘If you’re going to get shot, whose side do u expect me to be on’ or within the paradoxical nature of time in Owens poetry. Times implications can exist as an appreciation just as much as a deteriorating tool that reduces the soldiers back to primitive mentality ‘We only know war lasts, rain soaks and clouds sag stormy’.
Owens trepidation emerges from the capricious nature of war. His inability to comprehend paradox is driving his inquisitiveness ‘Is that why we are dying? The paradoxical nature of war epitomizes the propagandist politicians who both stimulate and fill the soldiers with pride yet simultaneously allow them to fall having lured them in. Nature can be condensed to one of many ‘Binary opposites’ in the form of Benevolence vs. revenge. Its lack of definition becomes tantalizing, as its intricacy tortures Owen into emotional outcry ‘Surely we have perished sleeping’. It governs war and is a blatant defiance to commitment, insulting the soldiers as it operates any way it wishes. Its inability to be punished evokes contempt.
In Catch 22, nature infiltrates the novel discourteously. An intentional device used by Heller similar to his treatment of madness, Heller uses wind irresponsibly ‘Whistling up through the jagged gash...kept up the myriad bits of paper…contributed to a sensation of lacquered waterlogged unreality’.
Nature’s lack of solemnity epitomizes the nature of the novel as a whole.
The reality of war is in itself under-estimated and inverted. It becomes a contradiction in the sense that instead of the soldiers complying to the cause, they question purpose ‘What are we doing here? In Exposure.
General Dreedle is a character deliberately employed by Heller to illustrate how the exertion of authority becomes amplified to the extreme. Authority becomes so dependent on power it disregards reason, for example Dreedle’s infuriation in not being able to kill Danby stems more from the resistance shown towards his prerogative’ Why the hell can’t I? Who the hell says I can’t? than the actual crime itself.
Intellectually, Heller can force his reader into entrapment through equivocal means. Notably when the natural instinctive purpose of war to ‘fight for your country’ cannot over ride ‘give up your life for Cathcart and me, we are left with ‘You’re either for us or against your country’. Its as simple as that’. This provides a paradox, for one cannot argue against the soldier’s purpose and allegiance, yet the fallacy of the simplicity blurs the choice or the ‘reality’ that Korn offers.
In my opinion, if one where to use the tantalizing torture of the Titanic’s measured yet unavoidable demise under the depths of the Atlantic in 1912, this would provide a fitting metaphor for Heller’s treatment of religion in Catch 22. The actuality of war embodies the subtle and underestimated iceberg, testing the potency of religion, instilling the soldiers with a frightened yet confined recognition. ‘For the love of God seems dying’ In Wilfrid Owen’s Exposure for example. Still using this analogy, we witness how religion almost subconsciously ‘ forfeits’ itself to the corrupt authority. Heller permits these people with the power to manipulate life and death. Lieutenant Scheiskopf’s wife for example, advises Yossarian ‘You’d better not talk that way about him, honey. He might punish you’ which perfectly compliments Colonel Cathcart’s earlier words ‘Maybe sixty missions were too many for the men to fly..he ought to increase the number at once to seventy, eighty..’
However, this metamorphosis becomes quite sophisticated. Rather subtlety, Heller obscures his answer through concealing it in the chaplain.
Religion enters the novel ‘Flound’ring’ like that ‘man in fire or lime’ that Owen introduces in D.E.D.E.. Although to Heller, parading religion’s inefficiency at war so distinctly would be too simple. Heller uses the journey of the chaplain from original morality to inversion ‘Tell him to pray to God, Chaplain’ to confirmation of his position as an interloper at war ‘What disgrace? I’m more in disgrace now’, ‘I’ve never told a lie before, isn’t it great?’
This impeccably explains why such characters like Yossarian and Dunbar who, we as readers may consider sane, argue that ‘there is no God’.
It is once again another binary opposite, Heller throws at us. Heller concocts pure religion vs. corruption.
(COMMENT ON OWENS TREATMENT OF RELIGION)
(Mention ability to ask questions)
Owens exquisite descriptive power allows the reader to identify with the soldiers and the war environment on an emotional and physical level. It provides a platform from which we can get inside his poetry. But we must be aware however, that we have not been invited. Owen throws us in and gives us no choice, we have become the filter from which he channels his frustration and anger.
Description helps enhance Owen’s subtle inquisitiveness, for example in DEDE, he forms a conceit between the title as he describes ‘ Dim through the misty panes and thick green light…I saw him drowning’. We can almost hear Owen asking ‘Is this the nobility and sweetness you talk of?’
Owen uses description to translate a chilling reality, but it isn’t so much used to illuminate the horror and suffering of war as much as it to emphasize the universal suffering of man, if war continues.
Paradoxically Owen exploits his state of entrapment to trap our response. Description blockades our escape route from the poetry. It functions diversely and although we can be ignorant of observation ‘White eyes writhing in his face’, Owen can drag us back into his poetry making us ‘feel’ ‘slow panic.
Alternatively, Heller rather subtly forces us to use the characters in his novel as ‘tools’ in order to bring his assault to the surface and help our understanding.
For example ‘laudable ideals such as courage, might, justice and patriotism were painted out by Milo’s mechanics…replaced with… M & M enterprises’. The word ‘paint’ (ADD MORE TO HELLERS DESCRIPTIVE ABILITY)
One of Wilfrid Owens most forcible works is Strange Meeting, a poem crafted so beautifully, it almost eliminates the need for others. It holds the answers to questions previously raised in his other poems. ‘I stood in hell’ for example answers the question in The Sentry, in which Owen is not sure of what he is standing in. Paradoxically, Owen uses hell, to achieve some form of peace and harmony. ‘Strange friend..here is no cause to mourn’.
Although hell perhaps embodies the sense of a puppeteer, stringing in the idleness and ignorance of humanity with a sadistic victory, Owen defies this, using his acceptance of the doppelganger to prove the pointlessness of war.
In paradoxical way, Milo touches upon this point with ‘And Germans are not our enemies’. Milo’s mentality to perceive war on a business-like basis may possess’ perverted beauty. His aptitude in being morally oblivious to the idea of the ‘enemy’ Yossarian talks about and being able to find good in them is either is either farcical or revolutionary. However his instinctive thirst for business ‘ but they pay the bills more promptly’ restricts room for a more appropriate answer as to why humanity maybe the possible enemy.
One may argue that the nature of existence is killing both Owen and Yossarian. Survival to Owen breeds guilt. A notion fortified by critic Stephen Finley who offers of Owens poetry ‘Survival is accidental and temporary’. The chilling realism in this theory is augmented in Catch 22 when the doctor insists ‘Of course you’re dying, we’re all dying.
In my opinion, one may use ‘The chasmed and deepened sheer’ Owen offers to us in Spring Offensive to best define existence in Catch 22. Existence becomes like a rope that Heller dangles down over death.
Similar to Owen’s inability to comprehend nature, Heller tortures Yossarian through paradox. The opportunism, war offers the soldiers and the indifference they seem to share towards death is tormenting him.
However, to the soldiers, the ‘rope’ is not subconscious. They are just aware as Yossarian only they disregard is solemnity, Chief White Halfoat for example, ‘To do so was merely his idea of a joke..like dying of pneumonia’.
The phlegmatic drift into death is exemplified by the characters that surround Yossarian, again causing him distress.
In the Sentry, Owen’s concluding line ‘ I see your lights – but ours had long gone out’ distinguishes both Owen and Yossarian. Could one argue that Owen is actually talking to Yossarian, offering him his recognition in his quest for survival?
Is he talking to the future, admitting his defeat yet offering reassurance?
Owen’s pertinacity in forcing humanity to understand how war has imprisoned the potential of his generation is echoed in some of his more poignant poetry. ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ is a cruel reminder that his generation will be remembered only for ‘the monstrous anger of guns’
The nature of this poetry is designed to stagnate. After the murderous carnage on the battlefield has ended, a poem like ‘Disabled’ is designed to agitate progression.
The catalytic nature of war alters the normal progression of age and development.
It is able to compress calibre both physically ‘A young woman materialised with her whole face disfigured by a piebald burn..no-one would ever love’ and mentally ‘He had grown too old for fun, he no longer had time’.
Intellectually, both writers can observe far beyond war into the inescapable inevitability of mans demise. With sheer brilliance, Heller uses Dr Stubbs words ‘What the hells the point? Since we all have to die anyway’ to perhaps illuminate humanity’s renunciation to nature.
Deaths omnipotence disregards scenario, status or age. However, one may argue that the aptness of war in being able to send collective numbers to their death and being able to compress the affliction of time’s incoherence is soothing, in a paradoxical sort of way.
Paradox is once again destroying Owen. He becomes philosophically inquisitive, for example In Futility ‘Was man created to die? And if so, what is the purpose of life?’
This parallels with Yossarian’s interrogation ‘With what matters did God occupy himself before the creation? Was there life after death?
Antithesis is a device that brings to Owen’s poetry, a ‘pendulum effect’, in the sense that it doesn’t necessarily ‘corner’ the poetry but rather allows two swinging ideas that both contrast each other to open up the poetry more easily.
It appears as though Owen uses one primary form of antithesis (life vs. death) to provide a backbone from which many others just branch off. In Disabled he uses ‘happiness vs. sadness’ or insignificance vs. importance’ or in Futility he uses the idea of being awake ‘always it awoke him’ against ‘to break earth’s sleep at all’.
Antithesis is an instrument that deliberately creates struggle. Be it through a subtle choice of binary opposition, for example, Owen’s struggle against his most feared antagonist ‘reality’ or through a character like Milo, whose depravity fights against morality ‘Nothing in the world means more to me now than finding that poor child’…’Illegal tobacco. Let me go. I’ve got to smuggle illegal tobacco’.
The contrast in the value of life in Catch 22 also generates antithesis. Yossarian’s desire for self-preservation contends with sheer negligence ‘I hope the bastard does die’.
In Anthem for Doomed Youth, the simile ‘die as Cattle’ is used to evoke feelings of naivety and vulnerability, which rather fittingly defines the soldiers’ status. Similes are a technique used to exploit the reader’s internal knowledge in order to bring us closer to the unknown.
Heller uses the device in this manner, notice his portrayal of Hungry Joe ‘He looked like hell’.
Owen’s diction becomes responsible for making his poetry as suggested in The Sentry ‘Too thick to climb’ for both himself and his audience. Ultimately its beauty lies in its ability to manoeuvre the reader in any direction. Onomatopoeia adds vitality to his language. It gives Owen the power to punish and awaken humanity from its unconscious state. For example, Owen can project ‘horrific carnage’ in Dulce Et Decorum Est yet the same sense of pain and suffering can be illustrated in some of his more dejected, sympathetic works, like ‘Futility’.
Both writers demonstrate exquisite craft in being to use more tranquil sounds to help aid the more fierce. For example, the ‘bloated gurgle of the stream and the respirating hum of he tall grass’ paves the gateway for an’ Earth shattering roar’. In Exposure, ‘The twitching and flickering gunnery rumbles’ provide the foundations for ‘sudden successive flights of bullets’.
Both writers share a propensity to use repetition in their works. It is used like a whistle to echo some of the inalienable truths of war. The victim in The Sentry insists ‘I’m blind, I’m blind.. which rather fittingly becomes the repercussion of the ‘grimly gay’ enthusiasm the soldiers share in the Send-off.
Owen’s play on ‘Nothing happens’ in Exposure, to me embodies religious derision. The reality asserted by this re-iterated emptiness becomes almost like a sardonic attack on religious appraisal ‘Thanks be to God’. The line trivialises the events that precede it, because as suggested by Heller ‘What difference’does it make? when ‘Nothing happens’.
A character like Dobbs is perhaps used by Heller as a metaphor for humanity ‘He was weeping, when Yossarian jammed his jack plug back in…he was able to hear again’, of course, once Heller removes ignorance, Dobbs is left stranded in a state of hysteria ‘Help him, help him…then help him, help him’.
The skies in Catch 22 are used as a backdrop for death and disappearance. The density of the ‘clouds’ for example help ease the soldier’s transition into obscurity.
‘During the night, the cloud blew away and in the morning there was no more Clevinger’.
The plane becomes a place of solitude ‘There was only one place to go in an aeroplane and that was another part of the aeroplane’. In such a confined space therefore, survival boils down to individual mentality. The external world are left debilitated ‘Waving his arms and shouting up at him, Mc Watt come down, but no-one could hear, certainly not Mc Watt’.
The same feeling of helplessness is articulated in D.E.D.E ‘Before my helpless sight, he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning’.
The intimacy between both Owen and his victim makes his inability to help much more tormenting and cruel.
The facetious nature of Catch 22 rather fittingly exemplifies Heller’s resentment and rebellion towards conventional attitudes to war. In my opinion, to use General Peckem’s words ‘It never escaped his memory that neither black nor white was a colour’ would to some extent help explain his motives for using humour in this novel.
Heller uses humour as an attack against the established panorama of war. Peckems words evoke a subtle question, why should we observe the world in black and white and decide where things are and are not appropriate? Humour rebels against our subconscious extraction of its presence, fighting against the norm.
Of course, If Owen where to adopt a similar humorous approach to his work, this would perhaps vanquish his objective to resist any poetic skill or effort.
In the same way, Heller uses a character like Milo to ‘paint’ over the American ethos, Owen uses this technique to demonstrate how war has encroached the beauty of laughter. ‘Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter’.
Owen gives blood a kind of discomforting persona. It becomes the enemy that has taken over territory, pre-occupying the lungs.
