Santa Ana

Santa Ana, the California Army Air Force base where Yossarian and Clevinger trained as aviation cadets, functions in Catch-22 as the first concentrated exposure to the institutional irrationality that will later define combat life on Pianosa. It is the setting for Lieutenant Scheisskopf's obsessive parade-ground regime and for the Kafkaesque Action Board hearing that convicts Clevinger of thought crimes, establishing the pattern of authority that treats men as interchangeable parts in a meaningless ritual.

Identity and Setting

Santa Ana is a stateside training base where aviation cadets undergo preliminary instruction before overseas deployment. It is here that Yossarian first encounters Lieutenant Scheisskopf, an R.O.T.C. graduate who is "rather glad that war had broken out, since it gave him an opportunity to wear an officer's uniform every day and say 'Men' in a clipped, military voice to the bunches of kids who fell into his clutches every eight weeks on their way to the butcher's block" [E00735]. Scheisskopf has poor eyesight and chronic sinus trouble, which makes war "especially exciting for him, since he was in no danger of going overseas" [E00735]. The base is dominated by the weekly Sunday parade competition, a ritual that Scheisskopf pursues with religious fervor while his wife waits amorously in bed reading Krafft-Ebing [E00751].

The Parade Regime and Scheisskopf's Obsession

Lieutenant Scheisskopf's entire command revolves around winning the Sunday parade. He sits up half the night studying books on marching, manipulates boxes of chocolate soldiers until they melt, and practices with plastic cowboys he keeps locked away [E00751]. His desperation leads him to consider nailing the twelve men in each rank to a long two-by-four beam, a plan he abandons only because making a ninety-degree turn would require nickel-alloy swivels inserted in the small of every man's back, which he cannot obtain from Quartermaster [E00756]. The parades themselves are absurd spectacles: men collapse from heat exhaustion, ambulances collect the unconscious, and a medical officer with a flair for accounting signals the band to strike up once enough bodies have been gathered [E00746-E00747]. The winning squadron receives a yellow pennant on a pole that is "utterly worthless" [E00748]. Yossarian hates the parades, finding them "so martial" and resenting being made to "act like a soldier in the blistering heat every Sunday afternoon" [E00749].

Clevinger's Persecution and the Action Board

Clevinger, a Harvard-educated intellectual who "knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it" [E00717], becomes Scheisskopf's target after the cadets elect their own officers following Clevinger's recommendation. The squadron wins the yellow pennant, then the red flag, and finally makes history by winning the red pennant two weeks in a row [E00757]. But Scheisskopf, having achieved victory, turns on Clevinger, bringing him before the Action Board on charges that include "breaking ranks while in formation, felonious assault, indiscriminate behavior, mopery, high treason, provoking, being a smart guy, listening to classical music and so on" [E00785]. The hearing is a masterpiece of circular logic: Scheisskopf serves as both prosecutor and judge, the bloated colonel with the big fat mustache threatens to rip Clevinger's body "apart limb from limb" [E00785], and Major Metcalf adds charges for failure to say "sir" when not interrupting [E00780]. Clevinger is found guilty because "he was guilty, of course, or he would not have been accused, and since the only way to prove it was to find him guilty, it was their patriotic duty to do so" [E00912]. He is sentenced to fifty-seven punishment tours, each consisting of fifty minutes pacing before the provost marshal's building with an unloaded rifle on his shoulder [E00912].

Yossarian's Role and the Question of Survival

Yossarian tries to warn Clevinger the night before the hearing. "You haven't got a chance, kid," he tells him glumly. "They hate Jews." When Clevinger protests that he is not Jewish, Yossarian replies, "It will make no difference. They're after everybody" [E00914-E00916]. Clevinger recoils from the hatred of the three men on the board, understanding "that nowhere in the world, not in all the fascist tanks or planes or submarines, not in the bunkers behind the machine guns or mortars or behind the blowing flame throwers, not even among all the expert gunners of the crack Hermann Goering Antiaircraft Division or among the grisly connivers in all the beer halls in Munich and everywhere else, were there men who hated him more" [E00917]. The Santa Ana episode thus prefigures the novel's central insight: the real enemy is not the Germans but the system that sends men to die for the career ambitions of their commanders.

Narrative Significance

Santa Ana establishes the template of bureaucratic absurdity that governs every level of the military hierarchy in Catch-22. Scheisskopf's parade mania—culminating in his discovery that hands should never be moved more than three inches from the thigh, which he unveils with the cry "Look, Colonel. No hands" [E00765]—is the same logic that later drives Colonel Cathcart to raise the number of missions for a feather in his cap. The Action Board's kangaroo court anticipates the chaplain's interrogation in the cellar and the deal Colonel Korn offers Yossarian. Santa Ana is where Yossarian first learns that survival depends not on competence or courage but on recognizing that the system is designed to consume those who take it seriously.