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buttressed by the difference between appearance and reality. This is accentuated by the blatant acknowledgment of the difference between the estimation and the actual capacity of Clevinger's intelligence in itself and as applied to the situation of Lt. Scheisskopf's appeal, "I want someone to tell me," another case of the difference between appearance and reality. |
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The reader could well note the business about Lt. Scheisskopf's parades, for here the parades, as so much else in the novel, are a metaphor, this time for all sorts of routine busywork and particularly for the kind of mentality behind that busywork. So, for such parades, the awards become victories without triumphs. |
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Throughout the chapter we find Yossarian in love, with Dori Duz, Lt. Scheisskopf's wife, or with whomever is present. This promiscuity sheds doubt on the reality of his love, however real it is on the basis of feelings alone, and is heightened by the concluding comments on Clevinger's amazement at the hate he sees and the need for real love in the affairs of this microcosmic world of Pianosa. Thus, Love joins Truth as another of the virtues the novel will ultimately uphold. |
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Chapter nine begins with another literary allusion, this time to Edward Arlington Robinson's "Miniver Cheevy," a poem about the discrepancy between appearance and reality; and this is just one more part of the prodigious effort of the author to keep this theme continually before the reader's mind. Here it is abetted by the reversal of the cliche about greatness thrust upon one; totally opposite to this is Major Major, who has mediocrity thrust upon him. Thus, Heller is able to debunk the cliche at the same time that he emphasizes the quality of Major Major's life. |
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The beginning of Major Major's life is a lie – one will remember Yossarian's and Chief White Halfoat's recollections of being lied to as children – and this lie has to do with his very identity – his name. Subsequently, he experiences rejection. It should be noted that, no matter how comic the situation proposed by the novel, it is true to psychological reality. In this case, the reality is being the rejected stranger as a boy or youth or young man because of some personal peculiarity, something many young people experience. |
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The anonymity of Major Major, however, is almost predestined, a fact accentuated indirectly both by the reference to his father's "Calvinism" and by the inclusion of his story in a chapter whose substance, for the most part, rests in the repetition of events: Major — de Coverly's horseshoe playing, the Ferrara incident, the episode of the naked man, and the signing of Washington Irving's name. Each of these episodes is alluded to frequently, not only to maintain the reader's attention to them but also to jade |
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