daryasilman 's review for:

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

5.0

---

It was a slow read. I wanted to put the books aside many times but finally, I finished it. And I found out its power on the unconscious level: two nights I was tortured by dreams about war. On the surface, the book looks like a mess of comical and satirical, and cynical moments, spread in time and space. Nevertheless, after deep thinking, all the comical elements become tragical, because we are talking about the WWII and about human life which is wasted so pointlessly. Nobody wants to fight, but everybody does for the freedom and for the world, and for America - all the loud words people in power like to apply to offer excuses for any of their actions. Most of the heroes of the book die as they lived - in a strange way, and you don't notice the cruelty of their deaths until you realise it is death we are talking about. The main hero is the only one who started to fight against the system and only, in the end, we see Heller's hope for escape from this bloody unfair mess.