Nately and his whore

Nately and his whore form one of the most poignant and structurally inverted relationships in the novel, a romance that moves from unrequited obsession through a brief period of mutual affection to a violent aftermath of grief and misdirected revenge. Their story traces the arc of love as both a transformative and destructive force within the absurd logic of war.

Origins and Asymmetry

Nately first encounters his whore in the enlisted men's apartment in Rome, where she sits naked from the waist down in a room full of grumpy blackjack players who ignore her. He is deeply moved by her bored, phlegmatic acceptance of mass rejection, marveling at what he perceives as heroic poise. She, in contrast, climbs five steep flights of stairs to sell herself to satiated men who already have girls living around them; none wants her at any price, not even after she strips without real enthusiasm. She seems more fatigued than disappointed, gathering her recalcitrant energies for the tedious chore of donning her clothing and going back to work. Nately slips out behind her, and when Yossarian and Aarfy enter the officers' apartment almost two hours later, she is there again, stepping into her panties and skirt, and it is almost like the chaplain's recurring sensation of having been through a situation before. She gives Nately his money back, tired of him, and wants to go looking for someone else. Aarfy sneers that she is only a whore, and Nately protests with passion that is both a plea and a rebuke, confessing in a shamed, far-off voice that he thinks he is in love with her.

Transformation Through Sleep

The turning point comes after Nately, Yossarian, Dunbar, and Hungry Joe rescue her from a hotel suite where middle-aged military big shots are holding her captive, making her say "uncle" repeatedly. She is bored and indifferent, having been on the job for twenty-two hours, and wonders vaguely why they want her to laugh when they laugh. Nately walks her out, and she sleeps for eighteen hours while he dashes about the apartment shushing everybody in sight. When she wakes up, she is deeply in love with him. In the last analysis, that is all it takes to win her heart—a good night's sleep. She smiles with contentment when she opens her eyes and sees him, and beckons him into bed beside her with a look of simpering idiocy of a woman in heat. Nately moves to her in a happy daze, so overcome with rapture that he hardly minds when her incorrigible kid sister interrupts by flying into the room and flinging herself down onto the bed between them. Nately's whore slaps and curses her, but this time with laughter and generous affection, and Nately settles back smugly with an arm about each, feeling strong and protective, deciding they make a wonderful family group.

Conflict and Control

Once in love, Nately attempts to impose conventional morality on a woman whose life has been governed by the economics of prostitution. He forbids her to go out of the room without all her clothes on, forbids her to go out hustling, forbids her to associate with her friends, and forbids her even to speak to the dissipated old man in the apartment. She responds with incredulous indignation, shouting "Tu sei pazzo!" and springing out of bed in only her panties to prove her independence. Nately fumed in circles of distracted helplessness, then sprinted out into the sitting room to forbid his friends to look at his girlfriend while she complained about him. When he declares that prostitution is bad, the old man counters that it gives her an opportunity to meet people, provides fresh air and wholesome exercise, and keeps her out of trouble. Nately's whore rolls her harassed eyes toward the ceiling and shakes her fists, asking what he wants from her. She agrees not to go to bed with Captain Black again or give him any more of Nately's money, but she will not budge an inch on her friendship with the ugly, ill-kempt, dissipated, filthy-minded old man, who witnesses Nately's flowering love affair with insulting derision and will not admit that Congress is the greatest deliberative body in the whole world.

Death and Aftermath

Nately is killed in a mid-air collision over Spezia when Dobbs's plane chews off the tail of another plane during evasive action. When Yossarian breaks the news to Nately's whore in Rome, she utters a piercing, heartbroken shriek and tries to stab him to death with a potato peeler. She lashes at him with her long-nailed fingers, spits in his face, kicks him in the groin, and attacks him with a bread knife, a wine bottle, and a steak knife over the course of several days. She disguises herself in a mechanic's green overalls and waits for him at the Pianosa landing strip, and later hides in the bushes around his tent dressed as a Pianosan farmer. Yossarian and Hungry Joe strap a parachute on her and shove her out the escape hatch over enemy territory, but she returns. She is waiting outside the hospital door when Yossarian decides to run away to Sweden, and the knife comes down, missing him by inches. Her grief is a force of nature, as relentless and irrational as the war itself, and it transforms her from an object of Nately's romantic idealization into a figure of tragic, vengeful agency. She holds Yossarian responsible for Nately's death, and in a man's world where every victim is a culprit and every culprit a victim, her fury is the only justice she can find.