Joseph Heller’s novel, “Catch 22” is a satirical novel of war and nonsense. Examples of absurdity in the novel “Catch 22” are abundant. We can also find examples of absurdity in our own lives.

Absurdity of monetary selfishness in Catch 22
One passage in chapter four, the conversation between Doc Daneeka and Yossarian, is important because it brings to the surface and then questions the much-practiced idea of ​​exchanging favors with each other. This practice is summed up by the last question in this chapter, “What else is there?” In other words, whoever exchanges favors with another person only acts in his own interest and, as this novel finally shows, there is much more than that; there is also love, the only true motivation for morality. One character who acts as if there is nothing but self is Havermeyer, who in chapter 38 reveals his motivation in life and for joining the reserves is money. The fleeting satisfaction that Havermeyer derives from money connects Daneeka and Yossarian’s conversation with the novel as a whole. With the risk of death, Havermeyer’s monetary motivation for joining the army can be said to be absurd as well.

Absurd rationalization in “Catch 22”
Another example of absurdity in “Catch 22” is in the last paragraph of chapter 17 (The Soldier in White). He discusses how each day Yossarian faced was another dangerous mission against morality. He had survived these missions for twenty-eight years, despite the fact that there were catastrophes lurking everywhere. What is important in this passage is the parallelism of it with the ever-increasing number of missions required to fly. It is the rationalization that justifies the increase in required missions; equally there is rationalization when one commits an immoral act. This episode points out the effect of such rationalizations or Catch 22s on life; they may make one simply give up morality because he or she may think it useless to be moral in a word with so much evil in it. The reference to Yosarrian miraculously surviving these missions against morality fits the book as a whole because it alludes to one of the main theological debates presented in the book: How do you explain a loving God when there is evil in the world?

absurd in our own lives
As an example of absurdity in our own lives, consider that it is illegal to speed, but it is not illegal to use radar detectors. A commercial for radar detectors, which I heard on the radio, said: “Drive responsibly and protect yourself from hundred dollar speeding tickets.” This is related to the ideas about the absurd as we discuss them in class because these two ideas are inconsistent; one cannot be a responsible driver and speed at the same time.

Absurd in the fine print
A second way to think about the absurdity of Catch 22 is that of the “fine print.” In the novel, the characters were bound by contradictory contracts in fine print. In current times, there are similar examples from real life. Keep in mind that credit card agencies send credit card offers that state that if you choose to get insurance that protects the card, you must sign your name for the card to be approved. In the small print it said that by signing his name on the card, he automatically accepted the theft insurance! against theft, there would be an additional annual fee. There were even two different boxes on this form, one to check if you wanted the insurance and one to check if you didn’t.