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admitting the enlisted men). Note here how Heller parodies a standard racial joke — "some of my best friends are Negroes" — in his treatment of Cathcart's view of the enlisted men. |
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Note, too, how the very name of Yossarian is beginning to create alarm, as it does in the final conversation of the colonel and the chaplain. |
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Chapter twenty presents us with a psychological study of the chaplain. Although it is entitled "Corporal Whitcomb," the corporal serves here mainly as the epitome of the world within which the chaplain tries to live and work. The study begins with his sense of cowardice, passes to his anxiety about the animosity he seems to provoke, and ends with his tragic sense of ineptitude. While the chaplain takes full responsibility for all of this, part of the purpose of the study is to ask to what extent he really is, or can be, responsible for the unhappiness in the world; and we see that at least part of his sense of guilt stems from swallowing whole, somewhat as does Col. Cathcart, the opinion of others who are generally occupied with pointing out "one of the things wrong" with him. In not being aggressive, ambitious, and calculating, however, he is distinctly unlike Col. Cathcart and Col. Korn and their miniature, Corporal Whitcomb. |
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The chapter also serves to address openly the deja vu theme, prepared for by the earlier episode of the soldier who saw everything twice. And here, the occasion for the chaplain's interest in deja vu is alluded to: the case of the naked man at Snowden's funeral. |
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Also, this chapter is the occasion for another episode of CID investigation. Note how the seemingly innocent episode related in chapter one (the signing of Washington Irving's name) is beginning to have more significant repercussions. |
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Here we are given one further dimension of Col. Cathcart's total reliance upon how others see him: he never is sure just how they do see him; and, therefore, he can only project his own anxieties onto them. It is no wonder that he receives no assurance from this, and his situation is highlighted by his counting himself among the "sophisticated, self-assured people." |
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Using what has been established in the last two chapters as a framework, this chapter goes on to relate several episodes (General Dreedle's treatment of Col. Moodus, the awarding of the Distinguished Flying Cross to Yossarian, and the Avignon briefing), each of which furthers the occasion for advancing some of the themes of the novel. |
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