General Dreedle's Nurse
General Dreedle's Nurse is a silent, smiling, and voluptuous young blonde who accompanies General Dreedle everywhere he goes, serving as both a status symbol and a tool of psychological warfare against his son-in-law, Colonel Moodus. Though she speaks almost never and is treated as a piece of property, her presence triggers a cascade of erotic longing and existential despair in Yossarian, most notably during the briefing for the Avignon mission, where her beauty drives him to a public moaning fit that nearly derails the entire operation. She embodies the military's commodification of female sexuality and the absurd, dehumanizing logic of a system in which a woman's body is used to torment a subordinate while the men who desire her are sent to die.
Identity and Appearance
The nurse is a chubby, short blonde with plump dimpled cheeks, happy blue eyes, and neat curly turned-up hair. She smiles at everyone and never speaks unless spoken to. Her bosom is lush and her complexion clear. She is described as "succulent, sweet, docile and dumb," and she drives everyone crazy but General Dreedle. At the Avignon briefing, she stands at General Dreedle's shoulder in her pink-and-green uniform, blooming like a fertile oasis. Yossarian, sitting in the audience, is mesmerized by her full red lips and dimpled cheeks, and he drinks her in insatiably from head to painted toenail.
Role as a Weapon Against Colonel Moodus
General Dreedle uses his nurse deliberately to torment his son-in-law, Colonel Moodus. Back at Wing, she has a uniform made of purple silk, so tight that her nipples stand out like bing cherries, with no room for panties or a brassiere underneath. General Dreedle makes her wear it when Moodus is around just to drive him crazy. He boasts about the rustle that occurs every time she shifts her weight. The first time he catches Moodus putting a hand on her or any other woman, he threatens to bust him down to private and put him on K.P. for a year. Moodus, in turn, complains that he has not been to bed with a woman since they shipped overseas, and that she drives him out of his mind.
The Avignon Briefing Incident
During the briefing for the mission to Avignon, Yossarian sits gazing in clammy want at the nurse, sick with lust and mesmerized with regret. He moans in deep despair at the thought that he might never see this lovely woman again. His first moan attracts startled glances from the men around him. Nately turns to him with alarm, whispering, "What is it?" Yossarian does not hear him. He moans a second time, then a third, each louder than the last. When he moans a fourth time, loudly enough for everyone to hear him distinctly, Nately hisses, "Are you crazy? You'll get into trouble." Dunbar answers Yossarian from the opposite end of the room, and soon the room is boiling irrepressibly into bedlam, with men moaning, giggling, and dropping things from their fingers. General Dreedle himself steps forward to quell the insurrection, ordering tersely, "That will be all, men." The incident nearly derails the entire briefing and leads to General Dreedle ordering Major Danby taken out and shot, a command that is only rescinded when Colonel Moodus whispers that he cannot legally shoot anyone he wants to.
Narrative Significance
The nurse is a flat character in the Forsterian sense, built around a single idea: her silent, smiling, and sexually charged presence. She has no dialogue, no interiority, and no agency. She is a narrative prosthesis, a tool used by the text to generate erotic longing in Yossarian and to expose the absurd, dehumanizing logic of the military hierarchy. Her body is a weapon in the war between General Dreedle and Colonel Moodus, and her beauty is a trigger for Yossarian's existential despair. She is a symbol of the commodification of female sexuality in a system where men are sent to die and women are used to torment them. Her silence and passivity make her a perfect object of desire and a perfect target for the novel's satire of military and patriarchal power structures.
