Americans to shoot down German planes. German anti-aircraft guns contracted
by Milo even shot down Mudd, the dead man in Yossarian's tent, for which
Yossarian holds a grudge against Milo. Milo wants Yossarian's help
concocting a solution for unloading his massive holdings of Egyptian
cotton, which he cannot sell and which threatens to ruin his entire
operation. One evening after dinner, Milo's planes begin to bomb Milo's own
camp: He has landed another contract with the Germans, and dozens of men
are wounded and killed during the attack. Almost everyone wants to end M &
M Enterprises right then, but Milo shows them how much money they have all
made, and the survivors almost all forgive him. While Yossarian sits naked
in a tree watching Snowden's funeral, Milo seeks him out to talk to him
about the cotton; he gives Yossarian some chocolate-covered cotton and
tries to convince him it is really candy. Yossarian tells Milo to ask the
government to buy his cotton, and Milo is struck by the intelligence behind
the idea.
The chaplain is troubled. No one seems to treat him as a regular human
being; everyone is uncomfortable in his presence, he is intimidated by the
soldiers--especially Colonel Cathcart--and he is generally ineffectual as a
religious leader. He grows increasingly miserable, and is sustained solely
by the thought of the religious visions he has seen since his arrival, such
as the vision of the naked man in the tree at Snowden's funeral. Of course,
the naked man was Yossarian. He dreams of his wife and children dying
horribly in his absence. He tries to see Major Major about the number of
missions the men are asked to fly, but, like everyone else, finds that
Major Major will not allow him into his office except when he is out. On
the way to see Major Major a second time, the chaplain encounters Flume,
Chief White Halfoat's old roommate who is so afraid of having his throat
slit while he sleeps that he has taken to living in the forest. The
chaplain then learns that Corporal Whitcomb has been promoted to sergeant
by Colonel Cathcart for an idea that the colonel believes will land him in
the Saturday Evening Post. The chaplain tries to mingle with the men at the
officers' club, but Colonel Cathcart periodically throws him out. The
chaplain takes to doubting everything, even God.
The night Nately falls in love with his whore, she sits naked from the
waist down in a room full of enlisted men playing blackjack. She is already
sick of Nately, and tries to interest one of the enlisted men, but none of
them notice her. Nately follows her out, then to the officers' apartments
in Rome, where she tries the same trick on Nately's friends. Aarfy calls
her a slut, and Nately is deeply offended. Aarfy is the navigator of the
flight on which Yossarian is finally hit by flak; he is wounded in the leg
and taken to the hospital, where he and Dunbar change identities by
ordering lower-ranking men to trade beds with them. Dunbar pretends to be
A. Fortiori. Finally they are caught by Nurse Cramer and Nurse Duckett, who
takes Yossarian by the ear and puts him back to bed.
Chapters 27-31
The next morning, while Nurse Duckett is smoothing the sheets at the
foot of his bed, Yossarian thrusts his hand up her skirt. She shrieks and
rushes away, and Dunbar grabs her bosom from behind. When she is finally
rescued by a furious doctor, Yossarian tries to plead insanity--he says he
has a recurring dream about a fish--so he is assigned an appointment with
Major Sanderson, the hospital psychiatrist. Sanderson is more interested in
discussing his own problems than his patient's. Yossarian's friends visit
him in the hospital--Dobbs offers again to kill Colonel Cathcart--and
finally, after Yossarian admits that he thinks people are trying to kill
him and that he has not adjusted to the war, Major Sanderson decides that
Yossarian really is crazy and decides to send him home. But because of the
identity mixup perpetrated by Yossarian and Dunbar earlier in their
hospital stay, there is a mistake, and A. Fortiori is sent home instead.
Furiously, Yossarian goes to see Doc Daneeka, but Doc Daneeka will not
ground Yossarian for reasons of insanity. Who else but a crazy man, he
asks, would go out to fight?
Yossarian goes to see Dobbs, and tells him to go ahead and kill Colonel
Cathcart. But Dobbs has finished his sixty missions, and is waiting to be
sent home; he no longer needs to kill Colonel Cathcart. When Yossarian says
that Colonel Cathcart will simply raise the number of missions again, Dobbs
says he'll wait and see, but that perhaps Orr would help Yossarian kill the
colonel. Orr crashed his plane again while Yossarian was in the hospital
and was fished out of the ocean--none of the life jackets in his plane
worked, because Milo took out the carbon dioxide tanks to use for making
ice-cream sodas. Now, Orr is tinkering with the stove he is trying to build
in his and Yossarian's tent; he suggests that Yossarian should try flying a
mission with him for practice in case he ever has to make a crash landing.
Yossarian broods about the rumored second mission to Bologna. Orr is making
noise and irritating him, and Yossarian imagines killing him, which
Yossarian finds a relaxing thought. They talk about women--Orr says they
don't like Yossarian, and Yossarian replies that they're crazy. Orr tells
Yossarian that he knows Yossarian has asked not to fly with him, and offers
to tell Yossarian the story of why that naked girl was hitting him with her
shoe outside Nately's whore's kid sister's room in Rome. Yossarian
laughingly declines, and the next time Orr goes up he again crashes his
plane into the ocean. This time, his survival raft drifts away from the
others and disappears.
The men are dismayed when they learn that General Peckem has had
Scheisskopf, now a colonel, transferred onto his staff. Peckem is pleased
because he thinks the move will increase his strength compared to that of
his rival General Dreedle. Colonel Scheisskopf is dismayed by the news that
he will no longer be able to conduct parades every afternoon. Scheisskopf
immediately irritates his colleagues in Group Headquarters, and Peckem
takes him along for an inspection of Colonel Cathcart's squadron briefing.
At the preliminary briefing, the men are displeased to learn they will be
bombing an undefended village into rubble simply so that Colonel Cathcart
can impress General Peckem with the clean aerial photography their bomb
patterns will allow. When Peckem and Scheisskopf arrive, Cathcart is angry
that another colonel has appeared to rival him. He gives the briefing
himself, and though he feels shaky and unconfident, he makes it through,
and congratulates himself on a job well done under pressure.
On the bombing run, Yossarian flashes back to the mission when Snowden
died, and he snaps. During evasive action, he threatens to kill McWatt if
he doesn't follow orders. He is worried that McWatt will hold a grudge, but
after the mission McWatt only seems concerned about Yossarian. Yossarian
has begun seeing Nurse Duckett, and he enjoys making love to her on the
beach. Sometimes, while they sit looking at the ocean, Yossarian thinks
about all the people who have died underwater, including Orr and Clevinger.
One day, McWatt is buzzing the beach in his plane as a joke, when a gust of
wind causes the plane to drop for a split second--just long enough for the
propellor to slice Kid Sampson in half. Kid Samson's body splatters all
over the beach. Back at the base, everyone is occupied with the disaster;
McWatt will not land his plane, but keeps flying higher and higher.
Yossarian runs down the runway yelling at McWatt to come down, but he knows
what McWatt is going to do, and McWatt does it, crashing his plane into the
side of a mountain, killing himself. Colonel Cathcart is so upset that he
raises the number of missions to sixty-five.
When Colonel Cathcart learns that Doc Daneeka was also killed in the
crash, he raises the number of missions to seventy. Actually, Doc Daneeka
was not killed in the crash, but the records--which Doc Daneeka, hating to
fly, bribed Yossarian to alter--maintain that the doctor was in the plane
with McWatt, collecting some flight time. Doc Daneeka is startled to hear
that he is dead, but Doc Daneeka's wife in America, who receives a letter
to that effect from the military, is shattered. Heroically, she finds the
strength to carry on, and is cheered to learn that she will be receiving a
number of monthly payments from various military departments for the rest
of her life, as well as sizable life insurance payments from her husband's
insurance company. Husbands of her friends begin to flirt with her, and she
dies her hair. In Pianosa, Doc Daneeka finds himself ostracized by the men,
who blame him for the raise in the number of missions they are required to
fly. He is no longer allowed to practice medicine and realizes that, in one
sense, he really is dead. He sends a passionate letter to his wife begging
her to alert the authorities that he is still alive. She considers the
possibility, but after receiving a form letter from Colonel Cathcart
expressing regret over her husband's death, she moves her children to
Lansing, Michigan and leaves no forwarding address.
Chapters 32-37
The cold weather comes, and Kid Sampson's legs are left on the beach;
no one will retrieve them. The first things Yossarian remembers when he
wakes up each morning are Kid Sampson's legs and Snowden. When Orr never
returns, Yossarian is given four new roommates, a group of shiny-faced
twenty- one year-olds who have never seen combat. They clown around,
calling Yossarian "Yo-Yo" and rousing in him a murderous hatred. Yossarian
tries to convince Chief White Halfoat to move in with them and scare the
new officers away, but Halfoat has decided to move into the hospital to die
Страницы: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60
