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“Catch-22” <strong>By</strong> <strong>Joseph</strong> Heller 200<br />
truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy,<br />
thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into<br />
justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.<br />
With effervescent agility the chaplain ran through the whole gamut of orthodox<br />
immoralities, while Nately sat up in bed with flushed elation, astounded by the mad gang<br />
of companions of which he found himself the nucleus. He was flattered and<br />
apprehensive, certain that some severe official would soon appear and throw the whole<br />
lot of them out like a pack of bums. No one bothered them. In the evening they all<br />
trooped exuberantly out to see a lousy Hollywood extravaganza in Technicolor, and<br />
when they trooped exuberantly back in after the lousy Hollywood extravaganza, the<br />
soldier in white was there, and Dunbar screamed and went to pieces.<br />
‘He’s back!’ Dunbar screamed. ‘He’s back! He’s back!’ Yossarian froze in his tracks,<br />
paralyzed as much by the eerie shrillness in Dunbar’s voice as by the familiar, white,<br />
morbid sight of the soldier in white covered from head to toe in plaster and gauze. A<br />
strange, quavering, involuntary noise came bubbling from Yossarian’s throat.<br />
‘He’s back!’ Dunbar screamed again.<br />
‘He’s back!’ a patient delirious with fever echoed in automatic terror.<br />
All at once the ward erupted into bedlam. Mobs of sick and injured men began ranting<br />
incoherently and running and jumping in the aisle as though the building were on fire. A<br />
patient with one foot and one crutch was hopping back and forth swiftly in panic crying,<br />
‘What is it? What is it? Are we burning? Are we burning?’<br />
‘He’s back!’ someone shouted at him. ‘Didn’t you hear him? He’s back! He’s back!’<br />
‘Who’s back?’ shouted someone else. ‘Who is it?’<br />
‘What does it mean? What should we do?’<br />
‘Are we on fire?’<br />
‘Get up and run, damn it! Everybody get up and run!’ Everybody got out of bed and<br />
began running from one end of the ward to the other. One C.I.D. man was looking for a<br />
gun to shoot one of the other C.I.D. men who had jabbed his elbow into his eye. The<br />
ward had turned into chaos. The patient delirious with the high fever leaped into the<br />
aisle and almost knocked over the patient with one foot, who accidentally brought the<br />
black rubber tip of his crutch down on the other’s bare foot, crushing some toes. The<br />
delirious man with the fever and the crushed toes sank to the floor and wept in pain<br />
while other men tripped over him and hurt him more in their blind, milling, agonized<br />
stampede. ‘He’s back!’ all the men kept mumbling and chanting and calling out<br />
hysterically as they rushed back and forth. ‘He’s back, he’s back!’ Nurse Cramer was<br />
there in the middle suddenly like a spinning policeman, trying desperately to restore<br />
order, dissolving helplessly into tears when she failed. ‘Be still, please be still,’ she<br />
urged uselessly through her massive sobs. The chaplain, pale as a ghost, had no idea<br />
what was going on. Neither did Nately, who kept close to Yossarian’s side, clinging to<br />
his elbow, or Hungry Joe, who followed dubiously with his scrawny fists clenched and<br />
glanced from side to side with a face that was scared.<br />
‘Hey, what’s going on?’ Hungry Joe pleaded. ‘What the hell is going on?’<br />
‘It’s the same one!’ Dunbar shouted at him emphatically in a voice rising clearly above<br />
the raucous commotion. ‘Don’t you understand? It’s the same one.’<br />
‘The same one!’ Yossarian heard himself echo, quivering with a deep and ominous<br />
excitement that he could not control, and shoved his way after Dunbar toward the bed of<br />
the soldier in white.<br />
‘Take it easy, fellas,’ the short patriotic Texan counseled affably, with an uncertain<br />
grin. ‘There’s no cause to be upset. Why don’t we all just take it easy?’<br />
‘The same one!’ others began murmuring, chanting and shouting.<br />
Suddenly Nurse Duckett was there, too. ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded.<br />
‘He’s back!’ Nurse Cramer screamed, sinking into her arms. ‘He’s back, he’s back!’ It<br />
was, indeed, the same man. He had lost a few inches and added some weight, but<br />
Yossarian remembered him instantly by the two stiff arms and the two stiff, thick,<br />
useless legs all drawn upward into the air almost perpendicularly by the taut ropes and