At a Glance
Captain Yossarian is an American bombardier stationed on a Mediterranean island during WWII who desperately wants to be grounded as insane. But Catch-22 dictates that anyone who requests to be grounded proves sanity by that very request. The novel follows Yossarian and his squadron mates through a non-linear series of absurdist episodes that expose the war machine as institutionalized madness — a bureaucracy more dangerous than the enemy. Yossarian's final act is to run.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
Initially received mixed critical reviews — many critics found it formless and undisciplined. Sold modestly at first, then spread by word of mouth among college students and veterans. By the mid-1960s it was the defining text of the Vietnam-era anti-war movement, read by a generation that had not fought in WWII but was being asked to fight in Southeast Asia. It provided a vocabulary — most importantly the phrase 'Catch-22' itself — for describing the logical trap of institutional power. The phrase entered common usage worldwide. The novel has sold approximately 10 million copies.
Diction Profile
Military-bureaucratic formalism applied to absurd situations — the gap between institutional language and human reality is the novel's primary rhetorical engine
Moderate