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| Catch 22 cover |
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atch 22, is the kind of book, that once you finish reading it, it destroys a lot of things, first thing it destroys is your taste in books, because it really raises the bar very high, so ordinary books will no longer suffice. You will have to find something disturbing, bizarre and utterly amazing, because this is exactly what this book is, it belongs on the shelf with Brave new world and 1984, except it’s more entertaining than 1984.
It destroys your faith in military, patriotism or any such notions, not because these are bad values, but because it exposes how incompetent and selfish men have exploited these notions for their own greed, and honest soldiers like Yossarian end up paying the price.
Yossarian is the anti-hero, he is always trying to run away from war, he is always pretending to be sick, so he won’t have to fly more missions, the generals are shown as complete imbeciles, who have no idea how to fight a war, so they never really plan anything, they just do things to spite each other, or gain superiority over each other and the men below them have to bear the burden of their follies.
As the novel progresses, lot of Yossarian’s friends die horrible, gruesome deaths, there is one scene which haunts me, it’s on the beach, where a soldier flies his plan on very low altitude, one of the young soldiers in the water, jumps up to touch the plane, except he gets caught in the fan, he dies instantly, and the soldiers who was flying the plane, is filled with so much remorse that he waves a last salute and flies his plane in to the mountain.
There is a doctor, he is a complainer, he does nothing for the soldiers, whenever a soldier complains of being sick, the doctor starts narrating his long list of, “you think that’s bad, what about me?”
There is a syndicate and everyone has a share.
If you enjoyed reading this, thanks for your time, if you want me to do other books feel free to comment
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