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.