I have just finished the book and let me just say "oh my gosh, that‘s insane, and what the heck did I just read?" Personally I think this book is a masterpiece, both in the way it is written, the plot twists and how everything in the book is tied together. I will talk more about this on sunday though, as the plan for today is to show you all how the events of this book relates to real life socio economic issues.
And oh what a show Catch 22 is. As you all know by now, the story of Catch 22 is set in Italy during World War 2. It was a time of great national pride, strong military forces and unfortunately mass murder that swept through multiple nations. It is a well known fact that the nazis were bad people, nobody liked Germany or Hitler, countries fought each other during great battles and in the third reich collapsed and Hitler committed suicide(or did he move to Argentina and lived there until his death? Look it up, theres an interesting article about the possibility). I am not here to dwell upon whether or not Hitler survived the war, I am here to tell you all about the social issues that this book talks about. Joseph Heller, the author of Catch 22, participated during World War 2 himself so he obviously knows what he is talking about when writing his book. One thing that I think makes it such an important book compared to the social issues, is of how he talks about them. He doesn't talk about the great battles like Normandy, and the battle of Somme, instead he talks about the more "hidden" issues. When I say "hidden" I am talking about all the atrocities that took place that aren't as popular in the story books, I am talking about incidents such as the murder of innocent civilians committed by soldiers, the prostitution and the rape. The book talks about how Allied soldiers would fly into Italy to fight Germans and while they would stay there they would be with several women and some women would even be raped and killed. Well according to Wikipedia.org stuff like this actually took place during the war, and no it was not the Germans who did it, it was soldiers belonging to the proud United States Army. During what is known as the Canicatti Massacre, Lieutenant Colonel McCaffrey had ordered the killing of Italian civilians. The number of people killed are estimated to be around seven people. In another incident, known as the Biscay Massacre, there were two instances of mass murders as US troops of the 45th Infantry Division killed roughly 75 prisoners of war, where most of them were Italians. A big theme of this book is about the war crimes that took place, and in it there are a lot of instances about rape. The very disturbing thing is that this took place regularly during the war. According to Wikipedia.org American GIs committed 400 sexual offenses in Europe, including 126 rapes in England, between 1942 and 1945. There is even an estimation that over 14,000 civilian women in England, Germany and France were raped by American soldiers during world war 2.
(Waffen SS troops executed by American soldiers)
The last thing I will talk about in this book blog now is of the American economy and family during world war 2 and their losses. The book talks about how the families of killed soldiers would receive money from the state so they could take care of themselves. The American economy suffered great losses and according to ushistory.com the war cost them 350 billion dollars, and not only that but over 292,000 soldiers were killed in action. Families lost fathers, and during the war some 20 million people were on the verge of starvation in the US. In the book there is talk about the Chaplain and his wife and how he is petrified that his family would die while he was gone and how afraid he was if he would never get to see them again. In the book the Chaplain does end up surviving the war and I expect he then gets to see his family again. Not everyone was as lucky as the Chaplain though, as according to ushistory.com there were 5 million war widows after the war. 5 million families who lost their husband and perhaps father. The losses from world war 2 were great and it is shown heavily in this book. This is it though for this week‘s book blog, join me again in a few hours when I will tell you specifically about all the characters in the book.
(This post has been pretty depressing so here is a picture of a cute corgi)
It really is quite interesting how people seem to forget the "less important" problems with war. It is often the major battles that get the most attention, while other issues that would have been the main focus in any other scenario pale in comparison.
SvarSlettSidenote: very effective use of a picture of a dog. 10/10
- Ellen Johanne