Two Novels'  Protagonists

        By Eric Wallin

          English 101

             1334

      Nov. 30, 1999
 

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        In the recently released "Random House list of the 100 most influential novels of

the  20th century," Catch-22 was listed as number 7, while  Slaughterhouse-Five

ranked number 18.  Yossarian, the main character in Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22,

 resides on the island of Pianosa in the Mediterranean Sea and is a bombardier in the United

States Military during World War II.  Billy Pilgrim, the main character of Kurt Vonnegut's

novel Slaughterhouse-Five, also serves in the United States Military during World War II

 and spends most of his tour of duty as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany.  Yossarian

and Billy Pilgrim have vastly different stories to tell, but they both offer a valuable insight    <two sentence thesis

into the gritty realism of war and war's effect on the fragile psyches of the young men who

lay their lives on the line for something so absurd as the notion of their country.  Yossarian

and Billy Pilgrim let the reader know a very valuable military secret; they do not say it

directly, but they imply it very clearly: the secret is that war is hell.

        Everyone has his own way of dealing with adversity.  One person may rise to every

occasion and overcome all the obstacles in front of him, while another may withdraw

into himself or run away from danger.  Yossarian prefers to run away.  He runs into

the hospital to avoid flying more bombing missions and tries in vain to convince Dr.

Daneeka that he is mentally unstable and therefore should not be required to fly any

more missions.  Yossarian is brash and outspoken about his fear of death and is not

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concerened with other people's opinions of him. Yossarian is happy to be known as a coward.

His only goal is to live forever or die trying.  Billy Pilgrim, on the other hand, does not complain

or question his duties as a soldier; rather he escapes the hellish reality he lives in by

"time-traveling."  When Billy is in an adverse situation, he just "time travels" until he

reaches a point in his life when he is not in such immediate danger.  Whether it is in the

future to his daughter's wedding day or to the past when he went with his family to the

Grand Canyon, Billy lets his mind abandon his body to reach another time where he is safe

and not in the direct path of harm.

        Yossarian makes many friends to help him through the nightmare and perils of wartime.

He is very friendly with some of the nurses at the hospital and spends a good portion of

his time trying to get any of them to sleep with him.  He also gets to go on leave to Italy

with fellow squadron members for some much needed rest and relaxation.  As much as he

pleads otherwise, Yossarian is a sane, scared man dealing with his fears as best as he can

by developing normal, human relationships.  Billy, in contrast, is deeply disturbed. His mental

illness reaches such an extreme that he invents a parallel universe that he can reach when

his mind needs an even further release from its current constraints.  In Billy's mind, he

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 time travels into the future where he is picked up by a spaceship and put in a zoo on

Tralfamadore--a planet far away from earth and even farther away from the reality that

Billy faces.  On Tralfamadore, Billy lives with a movie actress and is the ideal human

specimen, while on earth his body is weak and alone as it goes through the motions in

Dresden.

        While Billy Pilgrim and Yossarian handle the trauma of war in different ways, the

actual trauma that they endure is quite similar. Yossarian survives over fifty bombing

missions, while the majority of his friends are mere casualties to the inevitabilities of war.

While Billy Pilgrim doesn't really have any close friends, he still outlives almost everyone he

meets as most of his colleagues and captors die in the largest massacre in European

history--the firebombing of Dresden.  Both Yossarian and Billy Pilgrim are forced to deal

with the brutal realities of war, and the most touching aspect of these two characters'

personalities is the way they react to the death of their fellow man.  Yossarian is

haunted by the memories of Snowden, a single soldier, who died in Yossarian's arms.

Yossarian just can't forget that he was unable to save Snowden's life and succeeded only

in getting his uniform soaked in Snowden's blood.  Yossarian is so overcome with emotion,

that he sits naked in a tree watching Snowden's funeral, unable to fully cope with the loss

of a man's life that he tried heroically to prevent.  Billy Pilgrim, thanks to his mental disorder,

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remains completely unaffected by death.  Billy has gained an otherworldly tranquility about

the rumored demise of a human. Tralfamadorians have taught him that everyone lives

forever because we all have the ability to "time travel" back to when the seemingly deceased

was alive.

        Both Yossarian and Billy Pilgrim are fighting a war, a war not only against suffering

and pain, but they truly are fighting a war against the war they are fighting.  And while that

may sound as confusing as Catch-22's dialogue, it simply tries to say that war is hell, and I

think that Yossarian and Billy Pilgrim would agree.
 

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