There's Only One Catch, "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller

Just finished this classic. Honestly, I found it hilarious. But I generally find all absurdism in general hilarious. Everyone’s just such a character in this book. Like Major Major Major Major, for example. He gets embarrassed when he is promoted to Major and becomes a recluse by giving the guy at his door orders to only let people in when he’s out. Or Dunbar who is trying to extend his life by being bored all of the time so that time passes by slower. Or Milo, the resident businessman whose actions no one can understand, but it results in a huge profit. Yossarion is also pretty great, he’s the only one that’s mad that thousands of people that he has never met are out there trying to kill him. So he’s trying anything he can to get out of flying missions.

 Of course there’s a catch, catch-22. Catch-22 is that you can leave if you are insane, but asking to leave is a sign of sanity and so you would have to stay. Turns out that catch-22 is more than that, it’s also that the elusive “they” can do whatever they want as long as you can’t stop them.

Nearly all of the characters embody some certain quality, making them pretty similar to archetypes. What I find shocking about that is how realistic they all turn out, in most books the archetypal ones don’t seem very human at all, these ones seem shockingly realistic! Maybe it’s all of the absurdism around them, they seem reasonable in comparison, or maybe it’s the author’s way of describing what war does to a person. You become an archetype.

I really liked the ending as well, won’t give it away, but it ends hopeful and not as depressing as you would think. It’s comes out against people who use war to make a profit, those that use war for their own advancement. It’s a conflict of ideals versus flawed humans. Because humans suck, of course.

People keep talking about why classics are still “relevant.” Of course this work is still going to be relevant, do people still suck, yes they do, does war still suck, of course it does. The problems in this book are still around today, that’s why it’s still relevant!