#6. Slaughterhouse Five & Catch-22

I picked up Joseph Heller's Catch-22 during the March Break. I find it strikingly similar to S-5 because both novels are anti-war novels and the events are described out of sequence so that the respective time lines develop along with the plots. In addition, both works deal with the themes of inevitability of death and sanity versus insanity. Vonnegut made it clear that everything happens all at once, and though a person was dead in one moment, they were alive in many other moments. Heller narrates that although his main character wants to live, he will ultimately die. No one is certain whether Billy Pilgrim imagined the alien abductions or if they were real, and no one can escape the wrath of the term catch-22.
Honestly though, I find Catch-22 more hilarious than S-5. S-5 had elements of crude humour, such as how a dog (fed a slab of meat with bits of spring wire in it.) began bleeding from the inside out. I am only half-way through Catch-22. BUT my friend spoiled the ending for me. Apparently towards the end of the book, the style and tone becomes more pessimistic, and its a bitter ending.
So here's a briefing of the novel: It's about what happens to a certain U.S. squadron in WWII. The main character is Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces bombardier, who wants to finish the amount of missions required for him to go home. However, the number of missions needed is always raised. In the end of the novel, Yossarian still does not return home because the number has again been raised. There is also the concept of Catch-22, which I will explain in depth later. The lives of other characters are also narrated, and the events (though out of order) run into each other in a non-linear fashion that although is jumbled, makes sense.
Catch-22 is "a dilemma from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions" (Merriam Webster). For Yossarian to go home, he either has to finish his missions or be declared insane. But because he does not want to fly more missions, he must therefore be sane. So even if he is done his missions, he must still fly more missions because he is not insane.
The hilarity of Heller's masterpiece takes away some of the magic of Vonnegut's creation, although both books are captivating. They were real eye-openers, helping me see the world in a new perspective. These are the kind of books we should be reading in school.