Washington Irving
Washington Irving is a recurring pseudonym in Joseph Heller's Catch-22, a name that circulates through the novel's bureaucratic labyrinth as a forged signature on censored letters and official documents. More than a simple alias, the name becomes a symbol of the absurd, self-referential logic of Catch-22, a phantom that the military's investigative apparatus pursues with increasing futility, while the real forgers—Yossarian, Major Major Major Major, and Corporal Whitcomb—operate with impunity. The name's journey through the novel traces the breakdown of meaning and authority in a system where the signifier has become entirely detached from any stable referent.
Origins and First Use: Yossarian's Hospital Game
The name Washington Irving first appears as a playful act of rebellion by Yossarian while he is in the hospital, assigned to censor letters written by enlisted men. To break the monotony, Yossarian invents games with the censorship process, eventually blacking out entire letters and signing the censoring officer's name. When that grows monotonous, he writes "Washington Irving" on the letters he does read, and then "Irving Washington" when that too becomes tiresome. This seemingly innocuous act sets off a ripple of anxiety through the military bureaucracy, prompting the C.I.D. to send an agent into the ward, posing as a patient, to investigate the mysterious officer named Irving or Washington. The C.I.D. man's investigation is immediately stymied by the very system he represents: he finds the censorship work too monotonous and refuses to do it, a detail that foreshadows the circular logic that will define the pursuit of Washington Irving.
Adoption by Major Major: A Career of Forgery
The name is then adopted by Major Major Major Major, the squadron commander, who begins forging Washington Irving's name to official documents after a C.I.D. man's visit gives him the idea. Bored and dissatisfied with his meaningless role, Major Major finds that documents signed with the pseudonym never come back for further endorsement, unlike those signed with his own name. This discovery provides him with a perverse sense of accomplishment and progress. He soon expands his repertoire to include "Irving Washington" and later "John Milton," finding the latter more efficient due to its brevity. Major Major's forgeries are a direct response to the absurdity of his position: he is a commander with no real authority, and his only meaningful work is the act of signing his name to documents that have no bearing on his actual duties. The pseudonym becomes a tool for carving out a small space of agency within a system that has rendered him powerless.
The C.I.D. Investigation: A Comedy of Errors
The C.I.D.'s investigation into Washington Irving becomes a farcical pursuit of a phantom. A second C.I.D. man arrives, masquerading as a pilot, and immediately confides his true identity to everyone he meets, including Major Major. He becomes convinced that Washington Irving is the group chaplain, R. O. Shipman, after seeing a letter Yossarian had forged with the chaplain's name. The first C.I.D. man, still in the hospital, then jumps out of Major Major's window to warn him that Washington Irving has shifted his base of operations to the squadron. The two C.I.D. men, each unaware of the other's true identity, begin investigating each other, creating a closed loop of suspicion that never touches the actual forgers. The investigation culminates in the second C.I.D. man, after having his gums and toes painted purple by the medical staff, being sent to the hospital with a broken nose, his mission a complete failure. The system, in its zeal to find a culprit, has become its own worst enemy.
Corporal Whitcomb's Manipulation: The Name as a Weapon
Corporal Whitcomb, the chaplain's atheist assistant, weaponizes the Washington Irving pseudonym against his superior. He tells the chaplain that a C.I.D. man is investigating him for signing the name, and then reveals that he himself has just censored a letter from the C.I.D. man, using the name Washington Irving, to make it appear that the chaplain is trying to cover his tracks. Whitcomb's logic is a perfect example of Catch-22 reasoning: by forging the name of the very person the C.I.D. suspects, he believes he is doing the chaplain a favor, because it will confirm their suspicions and thus prove the chaplain is not afraid of being caught. The chaplain, horrified and confused, is trapped in a web of circular logic from which he cannot escape. The name, once a tool of playful rebellion, has become a weapon of bureaucratic persecution.
The Chaplain's Interrogation: The Culmination of Absurdity
The Washington Irving affair reaches its climax during the chaplain's interrogation in the basement of Group Headquarters. The interrogators, a fat colonel, a hawk-faced major, and a third officer without insignia, confront the chaplain with a photostatic copy of a letter Yossarian had forged, on which he had written "I yearn for you tragically. R. O. Shipman, Chaplain, U.S. Army." The chaplain, recognizing Yossarian's handwriting, denies writing it. The interrogators then use this denial as proof of his guilt, arguing that since he signed his name in someone else's handwriting, he must be Washington Irving. The logic is airtight in its absurdity: the chaplain is guilty because he is not guilty. The interrogation is a masterful demonstration of how the system can manufacture guilt from innocence, using the very tools of investigation—handwriting analysis, photostats, sworn statements—to create a reality that serves its own purposes. The name Washington Irving has become a floating signifier, a charge that can be attached to anyone the system wishes to destroy.
Thematic Significance: The Name as a Symbol of Catch-22
Washington Irving functions as a powerful symbol of the novel's central theme: the absurd, self-perpetuating nature of bureaucratic power. The name is a fiction, a joke, a game, yet it generates a real, tangible investigation that consumes the time and energy of the military's investigative apparatus. The C.I.D. men, the chaplain, and Major Major are all caught in a web of circular logic that has no origin and no end. The name itself is meaningless, but the system's response to it is all too real. It is a perfect example of Catch-22: the more the system tries to find Washington Irving, the more it proves that Washington Irving does not exist, and the more it needs to find him to justify its own existence. The name becomes a ghost in the machine, a phantom that the bureaucracy must pursue to maintain the illusion of its own purpose and authority. In the end, Washington Irving is not a person but a process, a self-referential loop that traps everyone who enters it.
