Living in the Wild

   We always tend to feel more comfortable in the place we call home, or the places we visit often on our daily routine. This being true, it seems perfectly normal to feel a little homesick and strange when we are away from our homes. We are sometimes away from our homes, but not for as much time as the characters were away from their's in Catch-22. This loss of ownership of one's own special place is felt hard in both spirit and mind. 
   
   In Catch-22, the characters introduced by author Joseph Heller have all someway or another been shocked by the loss of their own home. They have all been transfered into a different environment where the things they used to know and cherish are all gone, and they must learn to deal with this new setting as they will stay there for a long period of time. Some seem to not be so grief-stricken by this change and have learned to embrace their new location as their second home. The chaplain is one example of this: he loves his new home and has learned to make the most out of it by enjoying the loneliness he is faced with by reading and doing other more productive activities. He has even put his personal touch on it, like planting an herb garden close to his tent. Some have not embraced their temporary home so much and it is evident they have not adapted well to this change. Doc Daneeka is a demonstration of this; he obviously has not handled his relocation very well. He constantly complains about his drafting, and he misses his life back home more than anyone else. Although his motives might seem materialistic, the reader gets the general idea that he is a homesick man. 

   There are also cases where individuals completely lose their minds from being away from the place they call home and the society that comes with it. This is seen in Heart of Darkness' character, Mr. Kurtz. He had been deep in the Congolese jungle for many years when Marlow and his crew finally reach him. They found a man who had totally lost his identity and adopted a new behavior that is very strange, at the very least. This version of Kurtz is an effect of, along with greed and loneliness in Kurtz' instance, being away from one's home. Living in the wild obviously changed Kurtz, but he is the extreme case of what is seen in Catch-22's characters.      

   

The Catches in Catch-22

   Catch-22 is a satirical novel that portrays the mishaps and bizarre situations a group of American soldiers face in the midst of World War II. With its snide comments and ridiculous circulating humor, it has proven to be one of the best books I've ever read; I have really enjoyed it up until now. I have found the part where Heller explains the Catch-22 very amusing and only now realized that the book contains many catches, hidden at plain sight since the reader doesn't realize the many different connotations and definitions of the word catch.

   The first small catch in the book, which is not a part of the novel, is that the novel itself is a great catch. It is very entertaining, full of great stories and metaphors and an excellent piece of literary work worth reading. The story line and Joseph Heller's great description, syntax and diction will definitely catch your attention and soon you will find yourself caught in its fantastic web of adventures and inconveniences. 

   But there are also another use of "catch" that lies inadvertently in the novel. Aside from its use in the infamous Catch-22, catching is also a big part of a theme that is introduced in the novel: justice and getting what you deserve. In a part of the novel, the soldiers are talking about what if every person each received what they had coming, and one interjects to say that this is true, that he got malaria when he was having sex on the beach when he should have gotten an STD. Then another soldier replies that he got his STD when he went out to do a casual errand and he ended up having sex with a woman he didn't even want to have sex with. They both caught what was not coming their way, and maybe even their fates crossed roads and exchanged goods, as the second soldier suggested. They were just mere observers as their life got a little bit more screwed up than before, and not exactly the way they intended (more like deserved) to. 

   The vocabulary in these type of novels can contain more than what is seen at first glance,    as seen here. This is why it is important to analyze elements like these; the different meanings of the word "catch" add more meaning to the novel and more philosophical arguments to be explored.