I just finished Joseph Heller’s madcap satire about an American bomb squadron stationed in Italy during WW2 and I loved every minute of it. Heller deftly weaved biting satire of military bureaucracy with genuinely laugh-out-loud comedy and shocking dark moments. “I SEE EVERYTHING TWICE!”
Despite its humor, it is definitely an anti-war book. The characters all symbolize archetypes you find in the military, from the self-serving leaders, to the jingoistic officers, to the sane men who are preoccupied with self-preservation and are seen as insane for the audacity of not wanting to die.
When the book wanted to be brutal and disquieting, it delivered. When Yossarian returns from an aborted bomb run by an act of self-sabotage, the base is eerily still. Yossarian never felt this way before. He wanders around and is chilled by the stillness because his brothers are up in the air, potentially losing their lives and he is racked with guilt. It was beautifully poignant.
And then there are the shocking deaths, like Kid Sampson being destroyed by propeller blades as a consequence of hubris from McWatt flying too low to the ground, that exemplified how tenuous life can be. But perhaps the most notable death is the fate of Snowden, who keeps appearing in the novel as a ghastly reminder in Yossarian’s mind. We don’t know what truly happened to him till the very end, when its revealed that Snowden was eviscerated by flak fire and he’s lying in the back of the bomber plane moaning “I’m cold….I’m cold.”
Yossarian tries his best to patch him up, but in a tragic twist of irony, he discovers he was treating the wrong wound. He opens up Snowden’s suit and his guts come spilling out, and it breaks Yossarian. The scene of him standing in line for inspection completely nude is played for laughs in the beginning, but then you learn at the end *why* he was nude, why he refused to wear his flight suit: because his friend’s guts were all over him and it broke him.
I could go on and on, like Yossarian’s gloomy walk through Rome at night, and seeing the plight of the poor people and the wanton violence, but i’d be here all day.
I absolutely, positively, thoroughly enjoyed this book. My only fear is that it has ruined other books for me. It’s going to be a while before I find a book this good again.
I also want to mention the Hulu adaption, which I am currently watching. I’m a bit disappointed by it because it leaves a lot of the black comedy out in favor of a more traditional drama. I don’t recommend watching the adaption without reading the book first.
by ihohjlknk