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Catch22

Welcome to the Catch-22 Wiki[]

Am online encyclopedia about Joseph Heller's 1961 classic, satirical novel, the play script based off the book, the 1970 movie adaptation, and the 2019 Hulu miniseries. Please help this wiki grow, because what's good for this wiki is good for the country.

The Origins of Catch-22[]

Catch-22 is originally a novel which has slowly turned to serve as a colloquial phrase which means 'a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there's no escape due to conflicting or dependent conditions'. This is exemplified throughout the book as its first introduced by Doc Daneeka to Yossarian, and becomes prevalent in the stories of numerous characters.

Heller had originally intended to call it Catch-18 as it first appeared in a paper column in 1955, named after an important number in Jewish culture, meaning "alive" in Gematria and falling in line with his earlier drafts which focused more on the Jewish themes behind the book. However, Heller feared this would come off as too close to Leon Uris's Mila 18. He circled through Catch-11 (too close to Oceans 11), Catch-17 (too close to Stalag 17, another war film from the same time), and Catch-14 (the publisher didn't think this was funny enough). Eventually, he settled on Catch-22, which mirrored the doubly repeated digit he liked from Catch-11.

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