The Bloated Colonel with Mustache

The Bloated Colonel with Mustache is a recurring figure of grotesque and arbitrary authority in Joseph Heller's Catch-22, appearing both as the chairman of the Action Board that tries Clevinger and as a judge of the Sunday parades at the Santa Ana Army Air Force Base. He embodies the military establishment's capacity for irrational cruelty, substituting bluster and physical threats for justice or reason, and his presence underscores the novel's critique of institutional power divorced from any moral or logical foundation.

Role on the Action Board

The Bloated Colonel with Mustache presides over the Action Board that prosecutes Clevinger for the crime of having a mind. From the moment Clevinger enters the room, the colonel bellows at him, beating his fist on the table so hard he hurts his hand, then beating it again even harder. He roars that in sixty days Clevinger will be fighting Billy Petrolle and demands to know how he would like being shipped to the Solomon Islands to bury bodies. When Clevinger replies with courtesy that he would not like it, the colonel sits down and becomes "calm and cagey suddenly, and ingratiatingly polite," a rapid shift that reveals his theatrical cruelty. He threatens to rip Clevinger's "stinking, cowardly body apart limb from limb" and, when Clevinger tries to explain himself, interrupts to declare, "I may be stupid, but the distinction escapes me." The colonel's method is to trap Clevinger in a web of contradictory questions about what he did or did not say, refusing to accept any answer. He defines justice not as a principle but as "a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning. Garroting." This definition, delivered with full approval, reveals the colonel's worldview as one of pure, sadistic force. He finds Clevinger guilty because, as he reasons, the only way to prove guilt is to find the accused guilty, and it is their patriotic duty to do so.

Role in the Parades

At the Santa Ana base, the Bloated Colonel with Mustache sits on the reviewing stand with other officers, grading each parading squadron. The best squadron in each wing wins a yellow pennant on a pole that is "utterly worthless," and the best on the base wins a red pennant on a longer pole that is "worth even less." The colonel is present when Lieutenant Scheisskopf unveils his "no hands" marching innovation, and he whirls upon Scheisskopf "savagely with a purpling face" before hearing the explanation that makes Scheisskopf immortal. The colonel is also the one who, during the Action Board proceedings, threatens the corporal who can take shorthand, Popinjay, with his own trial immediately after Clevinger's, declaring, "I just can't wait to rip your stinking, cowardly body apart limb from limb." He asks Popinjay if his father is a millionaire or a member of the Senate, and upon learning he is dead, pronounces, "That's very good. You really are up the creek, Popinjay."

Symbolic Significance

The Bloated Colonel with Mustache functions as a concentrated emblem of the military hierarchy's contempt for individual thought and its reliance on intimidation. His physical description—"bloated" with a "big fat mustache"—matches his moral and intellectual obesity. He is never named, existing only as a type, which reinforces his role as a representative of a system rather than a person. His presence at both the parades and the trial links the absurdity of military pageantry with the injustice of military discipline, showing that the same arbitrary authority governs both. He is one of the many figures Yossarian identifies as being "out to kill him," a member of the faceless, powerful apparatus that values its own advancement over the lives of the men it commands.