Satire in Catch-22

“’That’s a very serious crime you’ve committed there chaplain’, said the major. ‘What crime?’ ‘We don’t know yet’”(Heller 391). The bureaucracy, those in charge, is interrogating him for something – what it is they don’t know. Heller uses this incident to demonstrate the downright absurdity of these military leaders. How can someone be interrogated for a crime that, not only they haven’t committed, but also one the interrogators don’t even know happened? It isn’t feasible. As the interrogation progresses so does the madness, “’We asked you to write your name in your own handwriting and you didn’t do it.’ ‘But of course I did. In whose handwriting did I write if not my own?’ ‘In somebody else’s’”(Heller 392). The interrogators just watched the chaplain write his name on a piece of

“A bomb pattern is something I dreamed up a couple of weeks ago. It means nothing, but you’d be surprised how rapidly it’s caught on. Why, I’ve got all sorts of people convinced I think its important for the bombs to explode close together and make neat aerial photograph” (Heller 335). Throughout the entire novel the topic of bomb patterns has come up and here it is finally learned that bomb patterns mean nothing. It was something made up by Colonel Cathcart; it is a complete waste of the men’s time. And it’s worse than that. “There’s one colonel who's hardly concerned anymore with whether he hits the target or not” (Heller 335). Yet another example of the scary amount of power those in positions of leadership have. This colonel can convince men that an arbitrary bomb pattern is more important than hitting the target. Not to mention that the colonel only concerned with bomb patterns is sending men out on missions, into mortal danger, not to inflict damage on the enemy, or to help with the war effort, but just to get a good looking aerial photograph.

Another instance of bureaucracy’s inefficiency is the concept of “bomb patterns.”

Throughout Catch-22 Heller manages to show the reader just how powerful and inefficient bureau

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