|
|
|
|
|
|
consequences would be. But by entering into this deal, his denial becomes false. It ultimately becomes a matter of calculation; and, therefore, what was a simple refusal becomes "an act of rebellion," an act which Yossarian is now measuring only in terms of its success. Yossarian's distinction between the two colonels and his country has ironic force as his serving the ends of the colonels leads him into a disservice to his country. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The second thing to note, while not so subtle, is of equal importance: although Yossarian has capitulated — and it is through his own weakness that Catch-22 re-asserts itself — the story is not over. The capitulation does offend his conscience as we discover when Nately's whore, symbolic of his guilty conscience, attacks him just as he leaves Col. Korn and Col. Cathcart. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
At the beginning of this chapter, we find Yossarian's supposedly sensible move called into question by the fact that one consequence of that move is his landing in the hospital in a "fog of insensibility." Also, it is fitting that, as the story began in the hospital, it end there, too. Knowing what we now do about the novel's structure, it should not surprise us if, just as the first chapter set the scene for the rest of the story, something like that would happen here. And so it does in three major ways. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The first of these can be seen in Yossarian's answer to the interrogation in the hospital. "Where were you born?" he is asked. "On a battlefield . . . in a state of innocence," he replies. There is more here than just the literal sense that Yossarian became a new man in the experience of the war. Such broad, metaphoric replies are intended to convey a truth about the human condition. The truth conveyed here is decidedly Miltonic, both in metaphor and in substance, and represents, in the inclusion of the concept of innocence, a spiritual sense of life. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Second, having placed himself in this tradition and perspective, Yossarian encounters the strange man who claims to have Yossarian's pal, a claim Yossarian frankly doesn't understand. In trying to understand, Yossarian keeps asking, over and over, "who's my pal?" The sheer repetition of the question suggests its biblical parallel, who is my neighbor?, the question which prompted Christ's parable of the Good Samaritan. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Third, because the parable raises the idea of one's neighbor (pal) beyond the idea of "a friend" (and because of the cold), Yossarian thinks of the most vivid case he knows of a man in need who, nevertheless, "had never been his pal" but only ''a vaguely familiar kid": Snowden. And it is as if, for most of the novel, it has been Snowden and his secret (what Snowden's case represents) that have dominated Yossarian's thinking and been the motivating factor in his fearful quest for survival. |
|
|
|
|