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We speak student!

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Catch-22

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a la Shmoop

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It's a mad world.

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At first glance, everyone in Catch-22 appears to be insane

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in one form or another.

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But given the illogical rules that govern the novel,

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maybe the characters are actually acting rationally

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within the confines of their existence.

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So question for you:

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are there instances where the characters' thoughts or actions,

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while seeming ridiculous, can be seen as rational?

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How does all that come to play?

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Yes, and, again, this goes back to what we were just talking about.

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Everything that happens in Catch-22,

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you have to ask, "Is this completely insane

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or is it totally sane? Which is it?"

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And because Heller frames war

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and the bureaucracy of war

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as a totally illogical place,

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something can seem both totally insane and totally sane

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at the same time.

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The major example, of course, is Yossarian,

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who is dubbed as crazy by the people around him

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and by us as readers; we see him as crazy.

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But he's crazy because he doesn't wanna fly missions.

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He has ridiculous antics to try and get out of them.

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He fakes a liver disease and all this crazy stuff,

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but is it really that crazy to be afraid of dying? No.

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He's maybe the sanest character in the book

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because he realizes he's gonna die if he does this

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and he wants to get out.

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Yet he's kind of framed as this super nutso character

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because, "Oh, he's faking a liver disease

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to try and get out of flying."

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And it's hilarious but then you're like,

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"Oh, no, no. That's actually really rational."

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And there's a couple other examples of this.

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There's this one guy who's convinced that

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there's a cat sitting on his face

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and suffocating him during the night.

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And this is the world of Catch-22.

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And he seems insane but turns out to be right

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until he shoots it off, and so on and so forth.

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But you see this a lot

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and it really reminds us that

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every scene, everything that happens in Catch-22,

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we're supposed to be questioning.

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And while it is funny and we're gonna laugh out loud at it,

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we're supposed to be reading it with a more critical eye.

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Got it. Okay. Makes perfect sense.

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How could the crazy actions of Catch-22's characters

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be construed as rational?

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How could Yossarian be seen as the most rational character in the book?

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[ plane noise ]

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