No, I am not done with Joseph Heller's Catch-22. Why am I posting? Well because maybe I'll move forward if I do! First of all, what I am going to write about here is NOT what I really anticipated talking about while reading the first half. In fact, I imagined talking about the amusing style of writing, the novel approach at the lunacy of war and the delightful word play. Oh, how I have enjoyed those aspects of this book! They are a delight and I really have found the rhythm of it alluring, so why am I stuck? What in the world is keeping me from pressing on?
I COULD blame being too busy- very true, but I am always busy during the school year. I COULD say that the cancellation of the atrocious Jay Leno hour at 10pm has made me watch more TV during what was once my reading hour each night- also partially true. I COULD say I've been overly busy getting my National Boards stuff done, but that isn't really the problem either. So what is it?
Well, here I am, once again in my lil' ol' life, stuck on something that slaps me of my past and I haven't quite shaken it off yet. My friends know about my upbringing and if you don't, no big whoop. I lived the first 15 years of my life with a mentally ill, abusive father (also a respected doctor in our town, so very smart with his abuse it would sicken you) that physically and mentally beat me, my sister and my mom. He not only hurt me, but targeted me as the main focus of his hatred from the age of 9 when my mom mistakenly told him that I had wanted to leave. A good example of his feeling towards me would be his last words to me- Heather has heard this- he told me that I was sent from the devil to destroy his life. And he meant it. So there you have it. I doesn't embarrass me to talk about, but it pisses me off when I get hit by the unexpected things that remind me of him or of myself when I was in survival mode or the weak girl that crawled out at the age of 15 and didn't even know what it meant to take a breath at home that wasn't filled with fear.
So what in the book triggered something for me? It was seeing myself in the repulsive, wise, man that ran the whorehouse in Italy. It wasn't all of his rant, but the stinging truth of what people will do to survive and how morals and "standing up for what is right" isn't always conducive to actually surviving. I am so angry at how deeply I know and understand that and I want to smack the naive Nately for his repulsion. He doesn't understand it- he finds him vile. Despicable. He is horrified by this man's words, of which there are many, but here are a few...
"'When the Germans marched into the city, I danced in the streets like a youthful ballerina and shouted 'Heil Hitler!' until my lungs were hoarse... When the German's left the city, I rushed out to welcome the Americans with a bottle of excellent brandy and a basket of flowers...'"
So many times I pretended to be anything that would please my father, anything that would keep him from wanting to destroy me. I survived like the old man, by being as pleasing and quiet as possible (can you IMAGINE me quiet and subdued?) and as this icky old man goes on to say, he knows he, and his country, will survive this war as well. They will bend and lose in order to survive. They will be turncoats. But they will be loathed for it. And that is why I am pissed off. I am so tired of hearing people judge others when they haven't faced anything. Nately, in his innocent protected world, sits and condemns and it sickens me how many people do that to battered women. If you haven't lived that kind of fear, you don't know what you'd do to survive and you don't understand the slow, creeping manipulations and control that holds people in situations like that. Instead of judging, maybe they should thank God that they've never had to find out what they'd do to make it. Of course, the old man would tell you, those that think that way WON'T survive...
So, I don't know. There it is. As I said, my posts are not always going to be about what the main themes of a book are, but how they hit me and my personal reactions to them. Take it for what it is, I guess. I know I'll finish it during spring break and I want to, I really do. It is amazing- delightfully funny and yet full of brilliant insight. I'll bet most people who read what the old man had to say won't get out of it what I did- and I did get what this character was saying to the masses, but it was what he said to me that I just needed to write about.
