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importance later. The first of these is Milo's mess hall operation which will develop larger and larger symbolic overtones. The other is the number of missions to be flown. This will not only provide a motive force for much of the action of the novel, but, together with the growth of Milo's operations, will provide a time clue for the chronology of the novel. Note also that Dunbar's ruse to make time pass more slowly (an elaborate pun on the meaning of time) and the presence of the CID are again mentioned in this chapter. |
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This chapter should alert the reader to the way in which the novel works both structurally and stylistically (and thematically as well since thematic development is tied to style and structure here). For instance there is the abrupt change in time and place, from Pianosa at the time of Yossarian's release from the hospital to Rome at an earlier time. This shift is accomplished through the common recollections of Orr and Yossarian — the extent to which Orr and Yossarian think alike will become more important as the novel progresses — and the purpose of the shift is to set two scenes side by side to enable the reader to begin to see the thematic significance of each scene in a way that would be impossible if the scenes were separated by intervening material. Yossarian's conversation with Orr is also a good example of the way in which language games work in the novel, creating through puns and distortions of context an enigma to be puzzled over. |
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These games are abetted by two other devices of the novel, exaggeration and reversal, as in the case of the self-made Col. Cargill "who owed his lack of success to nobody." This chapter also serves to suggest how decisions are made and by whom, an issue which will be raised repeatedly to call those decisions into question. This questioning of decisions will be a major distinction between the two outlooks represented by Clevinger and Yossarian in the last chapter and continued by Havermeyer and Yossarian in this one. The idea of life advanced by Yossarian is also contrasted here with the shooting of the mice, and from this point on there will be many oblique comparisons of men and mice or rats. But note how Heller keeps these comparisons from lapsing into the "man or mouse" cliche. |
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There is a brief allusion in this chapter to a central event of the novel, the bombing of the squadron by Milo; and this foreshadowing is just enough to upset the comic tone of these early chapters. This more serious vein is also suggested in the narrator's description, "ignorant armies clashed by night," an allusion to Arnold's "Dover Beach," and the suggestion culminates here in the macabre image of "tongueless dead men'' who people the "night hours like living ghosts." The reader will find it helpful later to have made a mental note of such references to ghosts and specters. |
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