Catch 22 Hospital Analysis

According to Thomas Allen Nelson, “significant in these recurring scenes is the setting of the hospital. In all three of these chapters, the hospital serves as a safe asylum from the outside world for Yossarian and Dunbar” (Nelson 2). Here, Nelson is showing that Joseph Heller’s use of the hospital is to mainly show that the hospital in Catch-22 by Joseph Heller is a means of escape from the atrocities of the war. However, Heller more importantly uses the hospital as a place where “the danger that the wound occasions results from the doctors who want to treat him by operating on [Yossarian’s] liver, not from treating the wound itself” (Craig 1). Instead of the hospital being a place of escape, the hospital is a place that brings even more
danger and absurdity directly to a character. Furthermore, Heller shows that there is no place to avoid the absurdities. Although Yossarian, the protagonist, sees the hospital as safety from the war, Heller privileges the hospital as a place to show the absurdities of the war to characters.
Throughout the novel, Heller exhibits Yossarian’s thought of the hospital as a place of protection from the absurdities of war. When Yossarian is voluntary in the hospital for a second time, Heller notes that “few people died unnecessarily. People knew a lot more about dying inside the hospital and made a much neater, more orderly job out of it. They couldn’t dominate Death inside the hospital, but they certainly made her behave” (Heller 165). Heller’s use of personification shows Death as being similar to an untamed animal. However, the hospital’s ability to tame Death shows the hospital as a stronger power over the evils of war. Here, Heller also contrasts the hospital with the battlefield. This makes the hospital look like a safe-haven compared to the massive amounts of destruction on the battlefield. Heller also points out that “outside the hospital the war was still going on. Men went mad and were rewarded with medals” (Heller 16). Here, Heller emphasizes how the values of war are absurd and that the only way for a character to be protected from it is to be in the hospital. He shows that there is
a severe contrast between the fighting outside of the hospital, where men were praised for killing, and the hospital, where men return to sanity and protected from the jeopardies of the war. In addition to the personification of death, Heller also makes the hospital look like a retreat from violence by imposing bad events on Yossarian as soon as he leaves the hospital. For example, every time Yossarian leaves the hospital “the colonel raised the missions to forty-five and Yossarian ran right back in, determined to remain in the hospital forever rather than fly one mission more than the six missions more he had just flown” (Heller 165). Heller repeating this specific event signifies that as soon as Yossarian leaves the hospital, danger inflicts itself on him. Without the safety of the hospital, Yossarian is vulnerable to the absurdities of war. The contrasting environments of safety and danger emphasizes that the hospital is an escape from violence and terror for the characters and it is a way for characters to return to sanity. Moreover, Robert Merrill’s philosophy, that Heller’s use of repetition destroys “any sense of a traditional time sequence... and creates a large canvas which is hospitable to repetitions no one will be tempted to place within a such conventional sequence”, shows the raise of missions as a normal appearance because it does not follow a time sequence (Merrill 1). Therefore, Merrill’s idea shows the hospital as a powerful protector from the normal. Heller’s use of personification and repetition shows Yossarian’s view of the hospital as a safe haven from war. However, Heller does not necessarily privilege Yossarian’s view. Heller privileges the hospital as a place that illustrates the hardships of the war in Catch-22 by showing the inability to hide from the outside world.
When the soldier in white arrives at the hospital, he was “encased from head to toe in plaster and gauze” and “sewn into the bandages over the insides of both elbows were zippered lips through which he was fed clear fluid from a clear jar” (Heller 10). Heller’s vast use of imagery exhibits the cruelty that the war puts on soldiers. Furthermore, here, Heller privileges the idea that the hospital is not an escape from war, but is an even further look into the war. Patients, like Yossarian, are permanently bombarded with the casualties of war every time a new patient comes in. Therefore, there is no way to avoid the war, even in a place that is associated with care and safety. When a new soldier in white comes into the hospital later in the novel, Heller uses imagery again by stating that the soldier in white was “encased from head to toe in plaster and gauze with both strange, rigid legs elevated from the hips and both strange arms strung up perpendicularly...” (Heller 167). By using imagery again to describe a soldier in white, Heller emphasizes that the dangers of war are endlessly present and that there is truly no such thing as a “safe-haven” when it comes to the war. Furthermore, by repeating some of the same words like “plaster” and “gauze”, Heller is able to show that the dangers of war affect nearly everyone and that
because it happens on a daily basis, everyone’s identity is merely just a “soldier in white”, or generic. In addition to the soldier in white, Heller also uses satire to show that one can never escape war. When in the hospital, Yossarian’s doctor sets up an appointment for Yossarian with a psychologist because the doctor considers Yossarian crazy. During the session, Major Sanderson, the psychologist, accuses Yossarian of being “dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot” and being “an enemy of the people” (Heller 299). Here, Heller shows Sanderson as the opposite of a psychologist. Major Sanderson is attacking Yossarian more than soothing his alleged craziness. Showing Sanderson as an anti-psychologist shows that the hospital is no barrier from the absurdness of the Catch-22 war. Similar to Colonel Cathcart not leading his soldiers to help the United States, but to help his own reputation, Major Sanderson is doing the opposite of his job. Heller illustrates how the idea that many characters do the opposite of their jobs is still apparent in the hospital. Heller privileges the idea of the hospital as a place that exposes characters to danger and absurdity because it reinforces the idea that the philosophy of “Catch-22”, which implies that, under this, soldiers are in a constant cycle of contradictions and have no way of getting out of it. By having the place that most people associate with care and comfort be a place of exposure to danger, Heller emphasizes this cyclic idea. Through imagery, repetition, and satire, Heller privileges the hospital as a building that puts characters, like Yossarian, directly into the crazy aspects of the war.
Instead of privileging the hospital as a refugee from the absurdities of war, Heller privileges the hospital as a place that brings the absurdities of war right to patients. Like Thomas Blues says, “Yossarian is provided with, but remains unconscious of, the opportunity to learn that the hospital is not the safe haven he likes to believe it is” (Blues 67). Blues discusses that although Yossarian believes that the hospital is safe, he does not realize that the dangers that it presents is directly in front of him. The war in Catch-22 is a war that reflects the powerful in a satirical way as well as a war that shows the inferior as insane. By Heller showing contradictions with the hospital, he is able to show the inability of becoming safe and sane and the inability to get away from the negativities of the Catch-22 war.