On Being Short

I am 5’3, which is generally considered short. When lining up in order of height for school pictures, I am always at the back of the line or close to it. The majority of my classmates (and plenty of people younger than I) tower over me. I cannot touch the tops of doorframes and more often than not I cannot reach the top bookshelf. If I decided to play basketball I would be laughed at. I’ve experienced plenty of the cons of being short. Whenever I went to a restaurant with my family, I was asked by a well-meaning server “would you like a kids’ menu, sweetie?” until roughly the age of sixteen. I was once carded for a PG-13 rated movie in the middle of my junior year. I have endured the dissapointment and embarassment of not being able to ride the big rollercoaster because I was a few inches shy of the height limit. I have had to stand on my tiptoes to properly see over the customer service counter. I have had to wriggle to the front of crowds in order to see the parade, concert, fight, etc. On a few occasions I have finally found a pair of jeans that were the right length for a person of my size only to discover at the check-out counter that they were actually capris. Taller friends have held objects high above my head in order to amuse themselves with the spectacle of my trying to grab it. In fifth grade I had to switch to a bottom locker because I could not reach the combination lock on my much-more-desirable top locker. For years and years I cursed my height and desperately wished that I could be taller. I felt as though an extra few inches would magically make succesful, respected, more attractive, and more likely to be taken seriously. Somewhere down the road, I realized that this was all wrong. Shakira, who is pletnty attractive and very succesful is only 5’0. Tom Cruise is only 5’6 and yet he is a world famous, much-swooned-over actor. Furthermore, taller people have so many worries and that I, a near midget, will never need to concern myself with. I will never have to worry about walking into doorframes, hitting my head on ceilings, being too tall for a bed or couch, or feeling in need of more leg room on airplanes. I also discovered that potential dates do not enjoy the emasculating feeling of being shorter than their female counterpart. Therefore, as a short, heterosexual female, this will never be a problem for me. The manifesto of the “Flying Spaghetti Monster” religion (also known an “pastafarianism”) even suggests that shorter people have greater spiritual power because the “noodly apendages” of the almighty Flying Spaghetti Monster are exerting greater force upon them. Also, smaller people consume fewer resources such as oxygen, food, water, and fabric for clothing. We also create less waste by consuming less. Our diminutive stature gives us the ability to hide more effectively from potential predators and our more stable, lower center of gravity makes us better fighters. If we humans were nearer to the bottom of the food chain, natural selection would most certainly favor short people. So fellow shorties, embrace your height. We are the prime examples of how less truly is more. (559)

Bibliography

"It Was All Yossarian's Fault - Power and Responsibility in Catch-22" - Stephen L. Sniderman

"You Must Remember This: Trauma and Memory in Catch-22 and Slaughter House 5" - Alberto Cacicedo

"The Night Journey in Catch-22" - Minna Dosokow

The Inferno

Minna Dosokow, an author of a particularly interesting article on Catch-22 that I found, compares the “night journey” through the streets of Rome that Yossarian embarks on in the later chapters as analogous to the journeys into the underworld that are characteristic of epic heroes (such as Aeneus and Dante). Being a Dante fiend, realizing that these chapters are fraught with references to The Commedia made me rather giddy. In this section, Yossarian wanders the streets of Rome in search of Nately’s whore after Milo has deserted him to buy smuggled tobacco products. Yossarian is confronted with an array of horrors that become more gruesome and helpless as his journey continues. Like Dante in Inferno, he is not being subjected to the terrors, yet he is not protected from that wrath they incur on his psyche. Dante at least had the comforting words of Virgil “only fear that which has the power to harm” to preserve his sanity throughout the journey. Yossarian is utterly alone and without any semblance of comfort. He is shown desperate poverty, injustice, and helplessness to horrifying degrees.

Yossarian is able to be in Rome because of his unrelenting refusal to fly more missions. At the time he leaves for Rome, his purpose is a selfish one. He wants to go home so that he can be out of harm’s way. However, by the end of the novel, Yossarian begins to chase a new loftier goal of ending the corruption and ethical perversion in the power infrastructure. Dante is shown Hell in order to regain the “straight way” that he lost in the dark forest of his exile and mid-life crises. The Hell that Yossarian sees is the full extent of the abuses of power that the authorities commit. Police beat an innocent man, and ambulance arrests and innocent man, dogs and children are beaten, and the M.P.’s come not for Aarfy who has raped and murdered the only innocent girl in the officers’ residence, but for Yossarian who is in Rome without leave papers. This is the turning point the novel where the authorities are portrayed and not only arbitrary and absurd, but also cruel and immoral. (744)

M&Ms

Catch-22 exposes the corruption and absurdity of the authority infrastructure in the military in an attempt to demonstrate the horrific futility or war. Milo Minderbinder represents the new ideologies that often arise from war-torn countries that lead to dangerously powerful authoritarian governments. When Germany was devastated from WWI, the power vacuum allowed Hitlet to come to power. Similarly, when Russia was frustrated with a self-serving monarchy, the Bolshevik revolution paved the way for the atrocities of Stalin. Milo Minderbinder starts out as a well-intentioned, low-ranking officer who merely wants to better the lives of his comrades by providing them with quality food. He starts a syndicate that “everyone has a share” in.

Exemption from flying as many missions as the other men gives Milo the opportunity to create a system of importing, exporting, buying, and selling that is too complex for its growth to be slowed. Furthermore, he does not have any other officers fully involved in his system. Since he is the only one who can understand his system, nobody can stop him. As the novel progresses, Milo becomes blinded by the power that he has. For the sake of making profits, he sells ammunition and military supplies to the Germans because “they are loyal customers too”. He even removes the morphine from the first aid kits that the pilots are supplied with. As a consequence, Snowden suffers a very painful death from a fatal wound.

When Yossarian, whom Milo trusts more than any other character in the novel, decides that he is going to find Nately’s whore’s kid sister, he enlists Milo’s help because of the power and influence that he has as a result of his syndicate. As soon as Milo realizes that he has an opportunity to make a profit off of smuggled tobacco products, he takes it instead of helping his loyal friend complete an honorable task. His decision shows the degradation of Milo’s moral fiber and the corruption of his values from absolute power. Yet, Milo covers his ethical perversion with the phrase “what’s good for M&M Industries is good for the country”. Such propaganda is similar to that of the Soviet regime that claimed to be working for the good of the people when in reality its only goal was to stay in power. (381)