An Ear to the Ground Series: Part Five - "Catch 22 Situation"...

Strictly speaking, to be caught in a CATCH 22 SITUATION is more complicated than having to choose between two evils. It is more like having no choice at all, since the only apparent way out of the situation is prevented or cancelled by some other element in the situation. An all too familar example is the predicament facing a young job hunter: you can not get a job unless you have some relevant experience; you cannot acquire any job experience unless you have a job.

The phrase comes from the novel CATCH 22, by the American writer Joseph Hellor, published in 1961. The catch here is the only way to get off flying on military bombing raids is to be declared insane, but to apply for exemption from such dangerous missions is obviously a very sensible thing to do and therefore not proof of one's sanity. 'Orr would be crazy to fly more missions', the book explains at one point,'and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to. "Such mad logic is used throughout the book to satirise war and military thinking.

If it were not for an accident of publishing history, we might today tend to talk of a CATCH 18 SITUATION rather than a CATCH 22 SITUATION. Joseph Heller originally called the paradox CATCH 18 and intended calling the book that too, but the best selling MILA 18, a novel by Leon Uris about the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto during the second World War, was published in the USA slightly earlier in 1961, and Heller and his publishers decided at the last minute to change CATCH 18 to Catch 22 to avoid any confusion between the two books.

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