Catch-22

Colonel Cathcart is a man blinded by irrational ambition. His desire is to make general, and he plots to accomplish this by calling attention to his own deeds: "He was complacent and insecure, daring in the administrative stratagems he employed to bring himself to the attention of his superiors and craven in his concern that his schemes might all backfire" (197). Colonel Cathcart considers all events in terms of how they reflect on his status. Good events are "feathers in his cap" and the bad are "black eyes." At one point he even writes the "feathers" and "black eyes" in columns, like pros and cons.

Colonel Cathcart becomes the nemesis of bombers like Yossarian, the novel's hero, because the number of missions the pilots must fly is continually raised, bringing many of them to the breaking point. Colonel Cathcart, however, is unmoved by the pressure this load puts on his bomber group. When the generals do not seem impressed by the sixty missions that his group must fly, Colonel Cathcart considers raisi

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m by insisting on the additional missions. Colonel Cathcart's sole purpose for proposing the prayer service is as a publicity stunt. He rationalizes that if some other colonel can get his picture in a national magazine then so can he. When the Chaplain protests that holding a prayer service without any reference to religion would not necessitate the presence of a chaplain, Colonel Cathcart retorts that it is the Chaplain's job to lead the bomber group in religious services, no matter what the nature of prayer. The Chaplain presents Colonel Cathcart with another catch, if he insists on holding prayer services in which religion is marginalized, then the Chaplain will not comply, making it impossible for the prayer services to work as a publicity stunt. Colonel Cathcart's next tactic is to suggest that the Chaplain pray for tighter bomb patterns before every mission. Such patterns would make for nicer aerial photographs and attract the attention of the top brass. As Colonel Cathcart notes, "It will be a feather in all our caps with General Peckem" (202). While the Chaplain does not object to this strategy, he brings up a catch that eventually torpedoes Colonel Cathcart's entire idea: enlisted men must be involved in the
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Approximate Word count = 1284
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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