Eros and Thanatos in Catch 22

Eros and Thanatos in Catch 22 MIKE FRANK The virtual absence of references to a foreign enemy in Catch 22 - which is, after all, ostensibly about World War II- is one of the more striking features of Heller's work, and has been often enough noted. But beyond the absence of such references there is an abundance of allusions to a different and even more pernicious enemy, one located on "our" side and implicit in our ideology. Yossarian, whose growing moral awareness is the focus of the novel, confronts not the forces of a foreign enemy but the realization that the enemy is within; by the novel's end he is certainly ready to second Pogo's classic notion that "we have met the enemy and he is us." The theme of the enemy within is repeated over and over again: in references to Captain Black with his high regard for Adolph Hitler "who had done such a great job of combatting un-american activities in Germany";1 to Colonel Cathcart , who is repeatedly willing to offer up the lives of his men in return for a taste ofglory; to Doc Daneeka, who thanks heaven for a war which saves him from a far from lucrative practice; and, most spectacularly, to Milo Minderbinder - the American free-enterprise system incarnated and carried to its logical terminus. It is Milo who puts the whole question of "the enemy" into perspective. Insisting that there is nothing wrong with doing business with the Nazis, Milo tells Yossarian that "the Germans are not our enemies"; he continues: "Oh, I know what you're going to say. Sure, we're at war with them. But the Germans are also members in good standing of the syndicate, and it's my job to protect their rights as shareholders. Maybe they did start the war, and maybe they are killing millions of people, but they pay their bills a lot more promptly than some allies of ours I could name. Don't you understand that I have to respect the sanctity of my contract with Germany?" (p. 251) In a curious way Heller supports at least part of Milo's contention, for Milo is indeed right: in the world of Catch-22 the Germans are not the enemy. But, of course, Milo is only partly right, and that the most insignificant part. For he is hardly aware of any enemy at all while Heller makes it clear that the real enemy, the source of the true danger, is that principle which can allow Milo so glibly to overlook Nazi crimes against human life. And that principle, as the text makes abundantly clear, is an economic one. For Milo contract, and the entire economic structure and ethical system that it embodies and represents, is more sacred than TH~ CANADIAN REVIEW OF AMERICAN STUDIES VOL. VII, NO. 1, SPRING 1976 human life. This same idea is reinforced when Yossarian, opening a first-aid kit to find morphine for the dying Snowden, fmds instead that Milo has appropriated the morphine for his syndicate and replaced it with a note reading, ''What's good for M & M enterprises is good for the country.'' What's good forM & M enterprises in this instance is nothing less than Snowden's suffering and death. While Milo could hardly have intended it that way, his note is, in Heller's design, prophetic, suggesting unmistakably that in the American way death is an important and "good" thing. The relationship between the American free enterprise system and the principle of death could hardly be more clearly or dramatically represented. The most important manifestation of this thanatotic American morality, important because it extends the responsibility from particular individuals or groups to American society at large, is Milo's bombing of his own troops as part of a deal with the Germans. Here is Heller's description of the aftermath of the raid: This time Milo had gone too far. Bombing his own men and planes was more than even the most phlegmatic observer could stomach, and it looked like the end for him. High ranking government officials poured in to investigate. Newspapers inveighed against Milo with glanng headlines, and Congressmen denounced...