Catch-22: Irony 6 key examples

Yossarian counts several of the other soldiers on Pianosa as his friends, including Doc Daneeka, Orr, and Nately, and, to a certain extent, Chaplain Tappman. But, ironically, all of these characters, despite being at least nominally Yossarian's friends, do nothing to help him, if not actively hurt him. This is not merely a situation of these men being bad friends; instead, they at once claim to be his friend and yet do badly by him. This reversal makes an ironic situation.

This irony occurs in different ways for the different characters. Early in the novel the narrator notes that "Doc Daneeka was Yossarian's friend and would do just about nothing in his power to help him." Despite being Yossarian's friend and the company's flight surgeon, a supposedly altruistic profession, Daneeka's sole interest is his own welfare, both for his money and his life.

Orr is, in Yossarian's view, too stupid to be any help to him; Yossarian calls him a "simple-minded gnome." But, in an extension of the irony, Orr is the only pilot shown to be smart enough to escape the war, through an elaborate plot involving faking his own death by apparently crashing his plane into the sea.

Nately's extreme family wealth makes him detached from everyone, including Yossarian. He had only joined the war because his family told him to and never thought he would fight. Nately indirectly causes great harm to Yossarian: after Nately's death in a battle, his "whore" blames Yossarian, and she spends the remainder of the book trying to murder him, leading to his serious injury.

 Yossarian's friends, who ought to be on his side, all either hurt him or are unable to help him. This is a pervasive irony of the novel, a contradiction brought about by the fact that all the soldiers are forced to fight. In other words, Catch-22, which traps all the pilots into the fight, leads to this irony of Yossarian's fickle friends.

The jokes come again and again. "He had to start at the top and work his way down" reverses the standard phrase in which a businessman starts at the bottom and works his way up. The final sentence is more verbal irony: he was a "self-made man" but the thing that he made was his "lack of success."

In addition to the verbal irony, there is also the situational irony of Cargill's career. Most of the time, in a capitalist economy, marketers like him are hired in order to make more money. Cargill, instead, gets hired to run businesses into the ground.

This description of Cargill, like all the ironic situations and characterizations in Catch-22, is meant to create a tone of illogic and absurdity, as part of Heller's satirical critique of the war effort. This instance also serves as an anticapitalist critique from Heller. The irony relies on the fact that it is good, under the capitalist system, to make more money, not less. By the structure of this irony, Heller casts doubt on the goodness of the American economic system, just as he attempts to undermine the logic of the American war effort.

Dramatic irony is when the audience knows something certain characters in the scene do not know. Here, the audience, having read the first 350 pages of the book, knows that Yossarian has already called himself Washington Irving while he was censoring letters and will continue to refer to Irving throughout the novel. (Washington Irving was an American biographer and short-story writer who flourished in the early 19th century; he is known for the stories "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.") This dramatic irony continues later in the same chapter, when the narrator notes that the CID men were "after a forger named Washington Irving" and continues through subsequent scenes. This links, notably, with a larger theme in the novel of a lack of literacy among the officers.

This is a quite different type of irony than the type that Heller tends to use much more extensively throughout the novel: that is, situational irony, in which there are indications that a character will act in a certain way, and then they act in a different way. Those sort of contradictions are fundamental to the illogical structure of the novel. The dramatic irony in the quote above, though, is also characteristic of Heller's novel. The non-linear timeline and abundance of characters leads naturally to these moments of dramatic irony.

In the scene, this soldier is usually referred to by the narrator as A. Fortiori. The narrator, Yossarian, and Dunbar refer to him by that name many times; it is Heller's style to use the same joke over and over till it becomes benign. This name is a play on the Latin phrase argumentum a fortiori, literally "argument by the stronger (reason)." The phrase refers to an argument made upon the basis of another, stronger argument. For example, if a man is dead, one can make an argumentum a fortiori that the man is not breathing. The term is often used in technical logical arguments in mathematics, law, and rhetoric.

By referring to Anthony E. Fortiori as A. Fortiori, Heller is making several subtle jokes. A fortiori, on its own, means "by strength." A. Fortiori is shown to enjoy using his own strength to scare younger, lower-ranked soldiers and to kick them out of their beds so he can lie there instead. But his name also becomes an irony once Yossarian lies in A. Fortiori's bed, later in the scene. It would be an argumentum a fortiori that if a hospital bed is assigned to a certain patient, then if a person is lying in that bed, the person probably is that patient. So when Yossarian lies in his bed, the argumentum a fortiori for A. Fortiori is incorrect. This reversal of expectations is ironic.

This construction is fairly standard for Heller contradictions: Milo is "praised" for these immoral acts. At this late point in the book, after so many different instances of contradictions, ironies, and paradoxes, the reader feels another layer of the absurdity of warfare in how repetitive these constructions become. But even these constructions begin to become odd and absurd as they are repeated so many times. This gives another layer to Heller's depiction of the war: not only does it not make sense, but it is boring and repetitive.

Heller, in this ironic description of Milo, parodies standard military honorifics. Milo "earns distinctions" for a "devotion to purpose above and beyond the line of duty" in stealing from his peers; he had "flown fearlessly into danger and criticism." These sort of phrases of distinction are rare in the novel (there are few admirable soldiers or officers), so when they are used here ironically, they are yet more effective. Later on the same page, the narrator uses an economic comparison rather than a military one, to make one last ironic picture of the two-timing salesman: "Milo had been caught red-handed in the act of plundering his countrymen, and, as a result, his stock had never been higher."

It is a well-known scientific phenomenon that when one of the body's senses is cut off, the other senses become more strongly perceptive. Yossarian is certainly experiencing this feeling. Lying with his eyes closed, he hears acutely the sound of shuffling papers and the doctors' "husky breathing." He feels the heat of the "searing lights": a tactile sense. He smells formaldehyde so "cloyingly" he can probably taste it. With such sensuous imagery, the reader cannot help but feel as if they are lying in the hospital bed like Yossarian.

But Heller, characteristically, couches this imagery within an ironic situation. In a moment in which Yossarian is supremely conscious, and doing everything he can to use his remaining senses, he appears entirely unconscious. Indeed Heller takes the irony to the extreme: Yossarian "played dead," while he is as alive to his surroundings as possible. Yossarian is "delighted" by this situation. He is so happy largely because, by this point in the book, he hates these doctors (one of whom says "Let's jab our thumbs down inside his wound and gouge it") and everything associated with the military.