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Patriotism In Joseph Heller's Catch-22

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“Whatever others may say, they say it to deceive and comfort themselves, not help you.” These eloquent yet bleak words of Serbian writer Dejan Stovanovic resonate in both the minds and physical actions of the characters in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. In his novel, Heller incessantly satirizes the deceptions between characters in order to mock the fallacious nature of patriotism to an overly bureaucratic military during wartime. One of these characters, Milo Minderbinder, is the personification of capitalism; no matter the circumstances, he puts his economic self-interest over even the lives of others, and intentionally deceives his comrades into thinking he is a faithful, loyal member of the American military and is generously trying to make life better for …show more content…

He explains, “I’d like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry. If we pay the government everything we owe it, we’ll only be encouraging government control and discouraging other individuals from bombing their own men and planes. We’ll be taking away their incentive” (259). Heller satirizes the views of free-market capitalists when outlining Milo’s outlandish preference for all countries to adopt armies made up entirely of mercenaries, and this makes clear the danger of disruptive financial motivations in governments and war. Milo’s clear passion for fostering unrestricted industries and even privatizing national militaries demonstrates the consequences of blind loyalty to an ideology, in this case, capitalism. Furthermore, these lines reveal that Milo deceived the United States military when he swore his allegiance to the nation and its defense yet consistently placed his commitment to capitalism above his loyalty to the United

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On this excerpt from Catch-22, Joseph Heller, tells a sarcastic story on how easy a man manipulates people and situation in order to make a lot of money. Joseph introduces a character which is Milo Minderbinder, an officer who’s in charge on feeding people also a leader of a syndicate – an underground organization that provides food for armies, easily gain trust from his own people and enemies. On Milo’s conversation with a general, shareholder of syndicate, he easily convince the general to give him a big payment in exchange of lots of food by saying “you’ll be paying the money to yourself when you buy from syndicate”(159). Using mild diction on his story, Joseph describes more on how Milo persuades people. Joseph italicizes most of ‘confiscate’

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It was not Tim’s sense of nationalist loyalties that caved him; rather, it was helplessness and his reputation that was at risk. Tim O’Brien longed to be that “secret hero” or “Lone Ranger” in order to impress those around him. However, he ends up learning that courage does not come in finite quantities. He finds himself resenting authority, “If you support a war, if you think it’s worth the price, that’s fine, but you have to put your own precious fluids on the line”. No matter how much he may find the law cruel and inhuman, he has is too prideful and decides to comply with the rules.

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In the nineteenth-century war novel The Red Badge of Courage, author Stephen Crane portrays a unique perspective on war uncommon for his time through the experiences of a young Union private, Henry. Crane boldly exposes the horrors of war rather than the commonly proclaimed glory and honor of war, as well as the idea that war allows everyday men “to take measure of themselves.” In the Civil War setting of The Red Badge of Courage, “taking measure of oneself” involves pushing oneself to the limit physically and mentally on the battlefield to determine how courageous or worthy an individual truly is, as demonstrated in the hardships Henry faced throughout the war. However, the idea of war being the true measure of a man holds little truth, as the concept only acknowledges courage in the face of physical danger, ignoring courage in other circumstances. Today’s society, embodied by individualism and diversity, would most likely reject Crane’s limited viewpoint on measuring an individual’s courage and worth.

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