History Literature / CatchTwentyTwo

A 1970 [[Film/CatchTwentyTwo film adaptation]], directed by Creator/MikeNichols and featuring an AllStarCast, was a commercial and critical flop. There was also a 1973 TV pilot made with Creator/RichardDreyfuss as Yossarian, but it was never bought. A sequel, ''Closing Time'', was written by Heller and published in 1994. It flopped as well. In 2019, another attempt at filming the original novel was mounted by Creator/GeorgeClooney.

* RealJokeName / RepetitiveName: Major Major Major Major. Not even he had known he was named that (he thought he was called Caleb) until he enrolled in kindergarten. [[BlackComedy The news kills his mother.]]

* ShooOutTheClowns: A number of Yosarrian's more amusing friends either die or simply disappear. [[spoiler:There's Orr, who turns out to have paddled to a neutral country. Dunbar eventually goes mad and disappears altogether.]]

* ShroudedInMyth: Major ---- de Coverly. No one even knows his first name.

** Milo Minderbinder, a ruthless profiteer, but one who does attempt to protect Yossarian from the very bureaucracy that he feeds. He even aids Yossarian in his mission to rescue Nately's prostitute's young sister [[spoiler: only to depart abruptly upon hearing of yet another new business opportunity]].

* BiTheWay: Yossarian, who falls in madly love with the Chaplain and, like most of his fellow soldiers, enjoys the services of Italian prostitutes.

* Catch22Dilemma: The {{Trope Namer|s}}. Done over and over and over, as befits the work that coined the term.

* ChekhovsBoomerang: [[spoiler:After Yossarian tells Nately's Whore about Nately's death, she keeps showing up out of nowhere and [[ShootTheMessenger trying to kill him]], including]] in the ''very last line of the book''.

* TheCuckoolanderWasRight. [[spoiler:The major reveal at the end.]]

%%* DissonantSerenity: Aarfy.
%%* DraftDodging

* InsaneTrollLogic

* ObfuscatingStupidity: [[spoiler:Orr. Oh yes.]]

* DadaHorror: The novel and its various "Catch-22" situations become less and less funny as the narrative progresses, [[spoiler:culminating with Arfy raping and murdering a girl through applying "Catch-22" logic to his sexual approach.]]

A 1970 [[Film/CatchTwentyTwo film adaptation]], directed by Creator/MikeNichols and featuring an AllStarCast, was a commercial and critical flop. There was also a 1973 TV pilot made with Creator/RichardDreyfuss as Yossarian, but it was never bought. A sequel, ''Closing Time'', was written by Heller and published in 1994. It flopped as well. In 2019, another attempt at an adaptation was mounted by Creator/GeorgeClooney.

This novel originated the expression "catch-22" to describe a no-win situation or a double bind. The number 22 itself has no actual significance and seems to have been chosen arbitrarily. The original title was ''Catch-18'', and that didn't have any significance either. It was changed so as to avoid confusion with ''Mila 18'', which was published shortly beforehand.

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/catch_22.jpg]]

A 1970 [[Film/CatchTwentyTwo film adaptation]], directed by Creator/MikeNichols and featuring an AllStarCast, was a commercial and critical flop. There was also a 1973 TV pilot made with Creator/RichardDreyfuss as Yossarian, but it was never bought. A sequel, ''Closing Time'', was written by Heller and published in 1994. It flopped as well.

For the type of no-win situation the phrase "catch-22" has come to refer to, see MortonsFork.

* GoodCannotComprehendEvil: Yossarian has heard stories of slave traders in Africa kidnapping little boys and selling them to men who disemboweled and ate them, and refuses to believe that anyone could knowingly cause a child to suffer.

* PointyHairedBoss
** Cathcart, who has no understanding of anything beyond an immature sense of what's good and bad for his Army career ("Black Eyes" and "Feathers in His Cap").
** Captain Black doesn't even know which country his army is at war with; [[InsaneTrollLogic he suspects one general of being a traitor to America because the general disapproves of Hitler]].

* SpiritualSuccessor: SlaughterhouseFive could be considered one. Both are rather similar in tone and subject matter, and contain satirical portrayals of World War II, although Catch-22 is more an absurdist look at the business and bureaucracy of war itself and Slaughterhouse-Five deals more with its aftermath. Heck, even their titles are similar.

* RapidFireInterrupting: Happens any time someone is brought up on (usually nonsensical) charges. If the officers doing the questioning actually let someone else finish a sentence, they might have actually gotten some useful information our of the process.

A 1970 [[Film/CatchTwentyTwo film adaptation]], directed by Creator/MikeNichols and featuring an AllStarCast, was a commercial and critical flop. There was also a TV pilot made with Richard Dreyfuss as Yossarian, but it was never bought. A sequel, ''Closing Time'', was written by Heller and published in 1994. It flopped as well.

* BilingualBonus: Lieutenant Scheisskopf = Lieutenant Shithead [[GermanLanguage auf Deutsch]].

* ScarSurvey: A subversion of the typical "{{badass}} soldier revealing his past" -- Yossarian asks Luciana about the scars on her back. She tells him that she got them as a bystander in an American air raid.

** Lt Col Korn, the brains behind the blustering Cathcart, is about the most affable antagonist in the book, possibly because he [[CardCarryingVillain knows he's evil]].
* AlliterativeName: The book is plagued with them: Doctor Dan Daneeka, Colonel Carl Cathcart, Milo Minderbinder and most famously, Major Major Major Major.

--> '''Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen''': "I almost cancelled [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo Operation Overlord]] until [[UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower Eisenhower]] added more armor."

* ArcWords:

* Catch22Dilemma: The TropeNamer. Done over and over and over, as befits the work that coined the term.

** Chaplain Shipman (Tappman in the movie and subsequent American editions of the book) has a plum tomato pushed upon him by Colonel Cathcart; later, this [[spoiler:becomes the bulk of the case presented against him by the military police, another example of the novel's major theme of bureacratic madness]].

* CorruptQuartermaster: Milo Minderbinder gets his start as one of these

* EyepatchOfPower: Major ----- de Coverly has one, which is part of why he looks so commanding that everyone is too afraid to ask his first name. It turns out that he got the eyepatch after [[spoiler:an irreverent old man thought he looked too haughty and tossed a flower in his eye]].
* FakingTheDead: [[spoiler:Orr pretends to have died in a plane crash to avoid getting caught when he escapes to Sweden]]. It's implied that a number of other characters who "died" were actually faking it, including [[spoiler:Clevinger]] - only [[spoiler:Kid Sampson and [=McWatt=]]] can be definitively said to be dead for real.

* FauxAffablyEvil: Aarfy, a rotund, absentminded, childishly-naive college boy, who has a strong sense of principles, is nostalgic about his fraternity days, and constantly smokes his pipe. He's also a [[spoiler: sociopathic social climber, a serial rapist, and a murderer.]] At one point, he even goes so far as [[spoiler: fondly recounting the kidnapping, gangrape, and robbing of two high school girls by him and his frat brothers]] to Nately. He seems to sincerely believe that Nately will respect this.
* {{Foil}}: Dunbar shares Yosarrian's desire for self-preservation and caustic sense of humor which makes them fast friends. However, his main focus is prolonging his life through a sense of boredom as he already knows he's going to die eventually (unlike Yossarian's desperate fear of death). Eventually, [[spoiler:he goes mad in the hospital ward and "disappears" for the rest of the novel]], which hints at a potential fate for Yosarrian.

* TheGenericGuy: [[ExaggeratedTrope Exaggerated]] with Major Major. Everyone who meets him finds it remarkable how unremarkable he is.

* HappilyMarried: The Chaplain

* HypocriticalHumor:
--> '''Chief White Halfoat''': "Racial prejudice is a terrible thing, Yossarian. It really is. It's a terrible thing to treat a decent, loyal Indian like a nigger, kike, wop or spic."
* ImColdSoCold: Snowden

** ''Catch-22'''s trademark brand of humour, so much that a logical paradox was named after it (the catch-22, of course).
** For example, Yossarian and Co. throw the uniforms of several Generals out the window while they are naked, because if they are naked they can't prove they are generals so Yossarian won't have to take orders from them. [[ActuallyPrettyFunny Even the Generals think this is a workable strategy.]]

* KangarooCourt: Clevinger's trial at the hands of Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who was his prosecutor, defender and one of the judges. And Clevinger was only put on trial because Lieutenant Scheisskopf thought he was being a wise guy.

* LastNameBasis:
** You can read the entire book and miss Yossarian's first name; indeed, you might think Yossarian ''is'' his first name. It's only mentioned twice: at the end of the "Catch-22" chapter and early in the "Snowden" chapter (it's John).
** Major ---- de Coverly is so intimidating that no one is even brave enough to ''ask'' his first name.

* MovingTheGoalposts: Colonel Cathcart keeps upping the number of missions that crews have to complete to be sent home whenever it looks like someone might actually make it. By the end of the book he had more than doubled the required mission count from what it was at the start, which started out being higher than the required mission count as specified by Army Air Corps regulations. Unfortunately, thanks to a Catch-22, the pilots aren't able to complain about this to anyone who anyone with enough rank to theoretically do something about this.

* NightmareFuelStationAttendant: Aarfy

** The thing Orr did to make a whore hit him repeatedly with her shoe is presented as this, complete with numerous [[UnReveal Unreveals]]. Subverted when [[spoiler: Yossarian finally works it out in the last few pages. "Because he was paying her to, that's why!" He was trying to get hurt badly enough to stay out of combat; when it didn't work, he faked his last crash and made his way to Sweden.]]
** The Dead Man in Yossarian's Tent is a particularly tragic one
* NoNameGiven: Major ---- de Coverley, whose face is so forbidding that no one dares ask his first name.

* OnlySaneMan:

* PointyHairedBoss:

* RealJokeName / RepetitiveName: Major Major Major Major. Not even he had known he was named that until he enrolled in kindergarten. [[BlackComedy The news kills his mother.]]
* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: While General Dreedle is a huge {{Jerkass}}, he also has no patience for the various bureaucratic nonsense that plagues Pianosa. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, by the time the Chaplain thinks to appeal to Dreedle to stop Cathcart, Dreedle has been overthrown by the far less reasonable Peckem and Scheisskops.]]

* ScarSurvey: A subversion of the typical "badass soldier revealing his past" -- Yossarian asks Luciana about the scars on her back. She tells him that she got them as a bystander in an American air raid.

* SomeOfMyBestFriendsAreX: Enlisted Men. Cathcart says this to the Chaplain when stating that he wants to keep enlisted men out of the prayers. The best part is when Cathcart tells the Chaplain, "After all, you wouldn't want your sister to marry one", and the Chaplin replies his sister ''is'' an enlisted man, a Sergeant in the Women's Army Corps (WAC).

* StrangeMindsThinkAlike: Captain Black justifies forcing people to sign meaningless loyalty oaths in order to be allowed to eat by arguing that those who don't are ''choosing'' to starve to death rather than proclaim loyalty to their country (never mind that he's not letting people he doesn't like sign). Similarly, Milo Minderbinder claims that he's a huge supporter of the free market and thus always makes sure there is an alternative to buying his products, which is why he lets the army men ''choose'' whether to buy food from him or starve to death.

* TextualCelebrityResemblance: Major Major Major Major looks like Creator/HenryFonda. Some characters even think he ''is'' Henry Fonda. Heller claimed to have written this with a movie adaptation in mind -- he wanted Major Major to be played either by Henry Fonda or someone who looked absolutely nothing like Henry Fonda. When [[Film/CatchTwentyTwo a movie was made in 1970]], they went the latter route with the casting of Creator/BobNewhart.

* WackyAmericansHaveWackyNames: Between the made up or just not given names of the characters, it's easier to name all the characters that have average names as opposed to non average.

* WhatExactlyIsHisJob: No-one knows what Major ---- de Coverly's official function is, and no-one is game enough to ask him.
* {{Yandere}}: [[spoiler:Nately's whore]]

* OhCrap: Colonel Peckem (and just about all the top military brass) have one when they realize [[spoiler: Scheisskopf, a CloudCuckoolander PointyHairedBoss, has been promoted to authority over them--and wants them all to march in parades.]]

* BandageMummy: a fully-bandaged wounded flier has one tube going in and one tube going out, and once a day the bottles of fluid attached to each tube are switched around. At least one person makes the claim that nobody's in there, [[CassandraTruth but nobody believes him]].

* HeWhoMustNotBeSeen: The Soldier in White is so covered by bandages that no one knows anything about him or even if he's alive.

** Aarfy, a rotund, absentminded, childishly-naive college boy, who has a strong sense of principles, is nostalgic about his fraternity days, and constantly smokes his pipe. He's also a [[spoiler: sociopathic social climber, a serial rapist, and a murderer.]] At one point, he even goes so far as [[spoiler: fondly recounting the kidnapping, gangrape, and robbing of two high school girls by him and his frat brothers]] to Nately. He seems to sincerely believe that Nately will respect this.

* DissonantSerenity: Aarfy.
* DraftDodging