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To begin to determine the answer to these questions Heller includes the episode of Yossarian's journey through Rome and the episode of Aarfy's crime. As far as the journey is concerned, there are two things to note. |
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First, the journey is not realistic, but, as we are told, "surrealistic"; it takes place in another reality, and for this Heller makes use of a traditional literary form called "the descent into hell" (or "the night journey"). This descent is prepared for by the many passing references to specters, etc. In the literary tradition, heroes descended to the place of the dead for several reasons and at least three are operating here. Like Orpheus descending to rescue Euridice, Yossarian goes to rescue Nately's whore's kid sister. Like Aeneas or Ulysses descending to find knowledge, Yossarian sees what the world is like. And like various figures who descend for healing, Yossarian descends as a man whose "spirit was sick." That this is a ''descent'' pattern is attested to by all sorts of details: it occurs in Rome; it is cold, dark, and ''tomb-like," the shadow-like figures "materialize," and he walks through streets of teeth reminiscent of the valley of dry bones. Even, explicitly, however, Yossarian speaks of the warning call he hears as a "heroic warning from the grave." In other words, by using this tradition, Heller has sent Yossarian on the heroic path and we will see whether or not he emerges as did the heroes. |
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Second, Heller interweaves another literary tradition here. The descent is prefaced by Yossarian's thoughts of the suffering of children, thoughts precisely reminiscent of Ivan's in Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov. And during the descent there is a major allusion to Raskolnikov, the protagonist in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. |
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The reference to Ivan is a prelude to Yossarian's exclamation, "What a lousy earth," an echo of Ivan himself. Thus Yossarian sees all the horror and hurt the world is capable of, culminating in the idea that "mobs . . . were in control everywhere." Mob rule is all we can expect in a Catch-22 world where, ultimately, might makes right; and Yossarian must not gloss over this reality into blissful optimism. But, Ivan is overcome by this view and this raises the question of its effect on Yossarian. |
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Here is where the reference to Raskolnikov comes in; for, unlike Ivan, Raskolnikov, himself a base criminal, is led to see that the evil of the world is within. So, in sequence, we have the allusion to Raskolnikov's dream of suffering. Then Yossarian, observing all of this, identifies himself with Christ. Then we have Yossarian's experience of deja vu, an experience from which Yossarian "recoiled with sickening recognition." As a psychic phenomenon, that recognition is of the "scene he had witnessed a block before." But, as we have seen, deja vu in this novel describes an internal discrepancy between intellect and spirit; and what Yossarian sickenly recognizes is himself in the "immobile crowd of adult spectators who made no effort to intervene" just as, in the scene a block earlier, "Yossarian |
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