Catch-22
Love and Sex
• “The one I picked out for you was married
for a short time to an elderly schoolteacher
who slept with her only on Sundays, so
she’s really almost as good as new.”
Milo the Mayor
• “. . .but Milo was Vice-Shah of Oran and
his person was sacred.
Nately’s Old Man
• “. . . Italy will survive this war and still be
in existence long after your own country
has been destroyed. . . . . All great
countries are destroyed.”
• “You talk like a madman”
• “But I live like a sane one.”
• “Anything worth dying for is certainly
worth living for.”
Socio-economics
• . . .”old money is better than new money
and . . .the newly rich are never are never
to be as esteemed as highly as the newly
poor.”
• “We’ll never be abot to convince anyone
we’re superior without our uniforms.”
More Socio-economics
• “What a lousy earth!”
Democracy?
• “The country was in peril; he was
jeopardizing his traditional rights of
freedom and independence by daring to
exercise them.”
• “Catch-22 says they have a right to do
anything we can’t stop them from doing.”
• “They don’t have to show us Catch-22.
The law says they don’t have to.”
• “Like us. Join us. Be our pal. Say nice things
about us . . . . Become one of the boys.”
• “Don’t worry about the men. They’ll be easy
enough to discipline and control when you’ve
gone.”
• “If they don’t want to fly more missions, let them
stand up and do something about it the way I
did.”
Business
• Courage, Might, Justice, Truth, Liberty, Love,
Honor and Patriotism
• . . .”Milo realized a fantastic profit from both
halves of the project for doing nothing more than
signing his name twice.”
• . . .”the Germans are also members in good
standing of the syndicate. . . ”
• Milo was all washed up until he opened his books
to the public and disclosed the tremendous profit
he had made.”
Business-2
• “But the business of government is
business.”
• “What’s good for M&M Enterprises is
good for the country.”
• “Killed by his own greed.”
• “Milo had been caught red-handed in the
act of plundering his countrymen, and , as
a result, his stock had never been higher.”
Religion and Values
• The Eternal City
• “The tree of life and of knowledge of good
and evil, too.”/”It’s a chestnut tree. I ought
to know I sell chestnuts.”
Religion-2
• “The chaplain had sinned, and it was good.”
• “It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all,
he saw, to run vice into virtue and slander into
truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into
humility, plunder into philantrophy, thievery into
honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into
patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody
could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely
required no character.
Religion-3
• “. . . Then berated himself repentantly, for
to pray for their safety was to pray for the
death of other young men he did not even
know. It was too late to pray. . . .“
• “Christ, Chaplain! Can you imagine that
for a sin? Saving Colonel Cathcart’s life!
That’s one crime I don’t want on my
record.”
Religion-4
• “When I look up, I see people cashing in. I
don’t see heaven or saints or angels. I see
people cashing in on every decent impulse
and every human tragedy.”
Truth and Lies
• “They had no right to lie to me!” “Of course they
had a right . . . . People had a right to do anything
that’s not forbidden by law”
• “I like the way you lie. You’ll go far in this world
if you ever acquire some decent ambition.”
• “I’m a university professor with a highly
developed sense of right and wrong, and I
wouldn’t try to deceive you. I wouldn’t lie to
anyone.” (What would you do if one of the men in
the group asked you about this conversation?) “I’
would lie to him.”
Idealism
• “Between me and every ideal I always find
Scheisskopfs, Peckems, Korns and
Cathcarts. And that sort of changes the
ideal.”
• “It’s still a miracle, a miracle of human
intelligence and human endurance.”
Illusion and Reality
• “So many monstrous events were occurring that
he was no longer positive which events were
monstrous and which were really taking place.”
• Dreams
• Wintergreen is probably the most influential man
in the whole theater of operations. He’s not only
a mail clerk, but he has access to a mimeograph
machine.”
Depersonalization and
Dehumanization
• “I’m right here, Sergeant Knight.”
• “Words cannot express the deep personal grief I
experienced when your husband, son, father or
brother was killed, wounded or reported missing
in action.”
• “There’s no one inside.”
• “Her dead body was still lying on the pavement“
• “I never paid for it in my life.”
• “They arrested Yossarian for being in Rome
without a pass.”/”They apologized to Aarfy. . . .”
Characters
• Lt. Scheisskopf, Col. Scheiskopf, Gen.
Scheiskopf
• Orr and Sweden
• Snowden: “It was easy to read the message in his
entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden’s
secret. Drop him out the window and he’ll fall.
Set fire to him and he’ll burn. Bury him and he’ll
rot like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone,
man is garbage.”