The fictional island of Pianos in the Mediterranean Sea, the US Air Force base invented by the author’s fantasy. It is a very real second world war.
However, each of the many characters in this vast literary fresco has its own war, for the sake of victory in which they spare neither strength nor life, and some - someone else's life.
Air Force captain Yossarian for the time being “fought normally”, although in the context of the novel this combination seems absurd. He was ready to fulfill the twenty-five sorties required by the US Air Force and head home. However, Colonel Koshkart, who dreams of becoming famous at all costs, continually increases the number of required flights patriotically, and to the desired return to Iossarian, as before a mirage,
Actually, for some time now Jossarian began to fight worse and worse. Rising into the air, he sets himself the only goal - to return alive, and it does not matter to him where the bombs dropped by him will fall - on an enemy object or in the sea. But the bosses bravely fight, ready to carry out the most daring operations, since their subordinates will risk their lives. They show a heroic disregard for the dangers that fall to the lot of others. They do not need to bomb an Italian mountain village without even warning civilians. It is not scary that there will be human casualties, but an excellent congestion will be created for enemy equipment. They are desperately fighting each other for a place in the sun. So, General Dolbing has plans to defeat the insidious enemy, which is another American general Dreedl. For the sake of generals epaulettes mercilessly exploiting their pilots Koshkart. He dreams of becoming a general and ex-ordinary first-class Wintergreen, and his dreams are not unfounded. He is a clerk in the base office, and a lot depends on how and where he will send the next paper.
However, the true arbiter of fate on the island is Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder. This supplier creates a syndicate, whose members he announces all the pilots, although he is in no hurry to share profits. Having received combat aircraft for his use, he buys and resells dates, cotton, veal, olives. Sometimes he has to bring in the Luftwaffe for transportation, and patiently explaining to his superiors that the Germans in this case are not opponents, but partners. Firmly determined to put the war on a commercial basis, he receives money from the Americans to bomb the Germans-controlled bridge, and from the Germans a solid jackpot for undertaking to protect this important facility. Inspired by success, he makes efforts to bomb the airfield of his own base on Pianos and scrupulously fulfills all the points of the contract: the Americans bomb the Americans.
Lieutenant Scheiscopf, unlike the great combinator Milo, thinks tightly, but he is a great master in terms of shows and parades. This allows him to make a dizzying career: from a lieutenant in a matter of months he turns into a general.
Absurdity, phantasmagoria in the order of things on Pianos, and those who have kept something human in themselves, die one after another. But military bureaucrats and piloted pilots feel great - they truly do not burn in fire and do not drown in water.
Terrified by the revelry of madness and the total rapture of the war, Jossarian comes to the conclusion: if he does not take care of himself, his song will soon be sung. “To live or not to live - that was the question,” we read in the novel, and the hero is clearly inclined to live. He rushes between the military base and the hospital, simulating various diseases and gaining love victories over nurses. The plot moves in circles, and the death of comrade Jossarian Sneggi, literally torn to pieces by fragments during the next sortie, becomes the central episode, after which Jossarian declared war on war.
This episode plays over and over, like an obsessive nightmare, overgrown with additional and eerie details. After the death of Snape, Jossarian takes off his military uniform - on it is the blood of a friend, which you can probably remove, but cannot be erased from memory - and it is fulfilled to never put it on again. He will walk around the military base in which his mother gave birth and in this form will receive a medal for courage from the hands of an impassive bosses. He will move backwards and with a revolver in his hand, repeating that everything that happens is the whole of the Second World War! - There is a diabolical conspiracy to destroy it. Jossarian will be considered crazy, but he has nothing against it. So even better. Since he is not in his mind, they must write him off. But the bosses are not so idiots as they seem. Jossarian learns about the existence of Amendment-22, which in the statement of the regimental physician Deyniki reads: "Anyone who wants to evade a combat mission is normal and, therefore, is fit for combat training."
More than once during the story, this mysterious Amendment-22, the full-fledged heroine of the novel, appears in different formulations. Amendment 22 does not exist on paper, but it is no less effective, and according to it, those who have power in their hands are free to do whatever they please with those who are not endowed with such power. To question the reality of the Amendment is to incur suspicions of insecurity. It is supposed to believe in and obey her.
Honest simpletons Knightley, Klevinger, Major Danby convince Jossarian that he was wrong in his desire to conclude a separate peace and withdraw from participating in the war. But Jossarian is now firmly convinced that the war is not going on with Nazism, but for the prosperity of the bosses, and those who in their simplicity succumb to empty words about patriotic duty are threatened by the prospect of dying or becoming a “soldier in white”, a stump without arms, without legs, studded with tubes and catheters, appeared twice in the hospital in the form of a kind of monument to the Unknown Soldier.
While Jossarian frightens the authorities with his escapades and indulges in drunken-erotic revelry, his comrade Orr is calmly and methodically preparing to complete his plan. To the surprise of others, his plane crashes all the time, it is strange that Orr is the jack of all trades. But these accidents are not the result of a pilot’s mistakes or the consequence of an unfavorable combination of circumstances. This is a pilot working out a desertion plan. Once again, having crashed, Orr went missing so that he would soon appear in neutral Sweden, where he was rumored to have sailed in an inflatable boat from the Mediterranean. This feat gives hope to the hearts of those who, like Josarrian, suffer from the whims of their superiors, and inspire them with new strength for resistance.
However, the capricious fortune suddenly smiles at Jossarian. His sworn enemies, Colonel Koshkart and Lieutenant Colonel Korn, suddenly turn their anger into mercy and are ready to let Jossarian go home. In their opinion, he badly affects the pilots in the regiment, and if he cleans up, it will only benefit everyone. However, for their responsiveness, they require very little. As Korn says: “We need to love us, to have friendly feelings for us. It’s good to speak of us while you are here and then in the States. ” In short, the bosses of Jossarian offer to become "one of us." If he refuses, a tribunal awaits him - the dirt is collected ample. Jossarian ponders and agrees briefly.
But then trouble awaits him. The friend of his deceased friend of nineteen Netley, an Italian prostitute whom he tried in vain to wean from her unworthy craft, suddenly saw in Iossarian the focus of those dark forces that caused the death of her romantic admirer. She pursues Jossarian with a knife and, after he makes a deal with Koshkart and Korn, inflicts a wound on him, which is why he goes back to the hospital, and for the first time for good reason.
When Jossarian comes to his senses, he will know two things. Firstly, his wound is trifling and life is in danger, and secondly, for propaganda purposes, a rumor spreads around the base that he was injured by blocking the path of a Nazi killer who was tasked with killing both Koshkart and Korn. Iossarian is ashamed of his weakness, and he is trying to terminate the deal. To this he was informed that in that case he would be put before the tribunal, because along with the report that Iosarian was stabbed by a Nazi saboteur, there is a second report, according to which he was "stabbed by an innocent girl who he tried to engage in illegal operations on black market, sabotage and sale of our military secrets to the Germans. ” Jossarian’s position is extremely precarious. Conscience does not allow him to make a deal with the Main Enemy, but he also does not like the prospect of toiling in prison with criminals. There is nobody to look for protection. Cute Minderbinder was always more powerful than Koshkart, but now they are united. Lieutenant Minderbinder made the colonel his deputy for the management of the syndicate, and he arranged so that other people's sorties would be assigned to Minderbinder to be considered a real hero. Actually, all the business people at the military base have united into a single whole, and resistance against this monopoly is useless.
After painful deliberation, Jossarian decides to desert to Sweden, and his immediate superior Major Danby does not find arguments to dissuade him. Moreover, he gives him money for the journey. He wishes success to him and the regimental chaplain. Jossarian goes out the door, and again Netley's girlfriend pounced on him with a knife. "A knife that flickered nearly ripped open his shirt to Jossarian, and he disappeared around the corner of the corridor." The escape begins.
