Milo Minderbinder From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder is a fictional character in Joseph Heller's most successful novel Catch-22. As the mess officer of Yossarian's squadron, Minderbinder is a war profiteer during World war II, "perhaps the best known of all fictional profiteers" in American literature.[1] The Minderbinder character is a “bittersweet parody“ of the American dream, both a “prophet of profit“ and the “embodiment of evil“.[attribution needed][2] Minderbinder also appears in Heller's late sequel Closing Time. In the 1970 film adaptation of Catch-22 the Minderbinder character is portrayed by Jon Voight.

Milo Minderbinder is the mess officer at the U.S. Army Air Corps base who becomes obsessed with expanding mess operations and trading goods for the profits of the syndicate (in which he and everyone else "has a share"). Milo is a satire of the modern businessman, and beyond that is the living representation of capitalism, as he has no allegiance to any country, person or principle unless it pays him.

Minderbinder, unlike most characters in Catch-22, who are only the subject of one chapter, is the subject of three chapters (Chapter 22: "Milo the Mayor", Chapter 24: "Milo" and Chapter 35: "Milo the Militant"). He is one of the main characters in the novel. His most interesting attributes are his complete immorality without self-awareness, and his circular logicality in running his Syndicate.

The Syndicate

Minderbinder's enterprise becomes known as "M & M Enterprises", with the two M's standing for his initials and the "&" added to dispel any idea that the enterprise is a one-man operation. Minderbinder travels across the world, especially around the Mediterranean, trying to buy and sell goods at a profit, primarily through black market channels. Everyone has a "share", a fact which Minderbinder uses to defend his actions, stating that what is good for the company is good for all. For example, he secretly replaces the CO2 cartridges in the emergency life vests with certificates for shares in M & M, on the assumption that the future person who may need that vest will be instantly compensated for its absence.

Eventually, Minderbinder begins contracting missions for the Germans, fighting on both sides in the battle at Orvieto, and bombing his own squadron at Pianosa. At one point Minderbinder orders his fleet of aircraft to attack the American base where he lives, killing many American officers and enlisted men. He finally gets court-martialed for treason. However, as M&M Enterprises proves to be incredibly profitable, he hires an expensive lawyer who is able to convince the court that it was capitalism which made America great, and is absolved only by disclosing to the congressional committee investigating what the enormous profit he made by dealing with the Germans was.

In typical Catch-22 satirical fashion, Minderbinder's business is incredibly profitable, with the single exception of his decision to buy all Egyptian cotton in existence, which he cannot unload afterwards (except to other entrepreneurs, who sell the cotton back to him because he simply ordered all Egyptian cotton) and tries to dispose of by coating it with chocolate and serving it in the mess hall. Later Yossarian gives Minderbinder the idea of selling the cotton to the government, since "the business of government is 'business'." The exact size of Minderbinder's syndicate is never specified. At the beginning of the novel, it is merely a system that gets fresh eggs to his mess hall by buying them in Sicily for one cent, selling them to Malta for four and a half cents, buying them back for seven cents, and finally selling them to the mess halls for five cents. However, the syndicate is soon revealed to have become a large company, and then an international syndicate, making Minderbinder the Mayor of Palermo, Assistant Governor-General of Malta, Shah of Oran, Caliph of Baghdad, mayor of Cairo, and the god of corn, rain, and rice in various pagan African countries. Whenever Minderbinder appears in one of his cities, an impromptu holiday with parades forming around him is declared.

Ironically, Minderbinder trusts the novel's protagonist Yossarian more than he trusts anyone else because Yossarian — an unselfish man of principle — is so unlike himself.[2] After learning that Yossarian can have all the dried fruit he wants, which he then gives to friends in the squadron, Minderbinder decides that he can be trusted because "anyone who would not steal from the country he loved would not steal from anyone."

Catch-22

Catch-22 is a satirical, historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller, first published in 1961. The novel, set during the later stages of World War II from 1943 onwards, is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the twentieth century.[2] It has a distinctive non-chronological style where events are described from different characters' points of view and out of sequence so that the time line develops along with the plot. Most events occur while the airmen of the fictional Fighting 256th (or "two to the fighting eighth power") Squadron are based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea west of Italy.

CATCH - 22

Among other things, Catch-22 is a general critique of bureaucratic operation and reasoning. Resulting from its specific use in the book, the phrase "Catch-22" is common idiomatic usage meaning "a no-win situation" or "a double bind" of any type. Within the book, "Catch-22" is a military rule, the self-contradictory circular logic that, for example, prevents anyone from avoiding combat missions. In Heller's own words:

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. 'Orr' was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. "That's some catch, that Catch-22," Yossarian observed. "It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

Other forms of Catch-22 are invoked throughout the novel to justify various bureaucratic actions. At one point, victims of harassment by military police (MPs) quote the MPs as having explained one of Catch-22's provisions: Catch-22 states that agents enforcing Catch-22 need not prove that Catch-22 actually contains whatever provision the accused violator is accused of violating. An old woman explains: Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing. This nightmare of a bureaucracy crushing the individual with absurdity is similar to the world of Kafka's 'Trial', and George Orwell's '1984', the concept of 'doublethink' having definite echoes in Heller's work.

Yossarian comes to realize that Catch-22 does not actually exist, but because the powers that be claim it does, and the world believes it does, it nevertheless has potent effects. Indeed, because it does not exist there is no way it can be repealed, undone, overthrown, or denounced. The combination of brute force with specious legalistic justification is one of the book's primary motifs.

During the second half of World War II, a B-25 bombardier named Yossarian is stationed with his Air Force squadron on the Italian coast in the Mediterranean Sea. Yossarian endures a nightmarish, absurd existence defined by bureaucracy and violence: they are inhuman resources in the eyes of their blindly ambitious superior officers. The squadron is thrown thoughtlessly into brutal combat situations and bombing runs in which it is more important for the squadron members to capture good aerial photographs of explosions than to destroy their targets. Their colonels continually raise the number of missions that they are required to fly before being sent home, so that no one is ever sent home.

Yossarian's story forms the core of the novel, so most events are refracted through his point of view. Yossarian takes the whole war personally: unswayed by national ideals or abstract principles, Yossarian is furious that his life is in constant danger through no fault of his own. He has a strong desire to live and is determined to be immortal or die trying. Catch-22 is a law defined in various ways throughout the novel. First, Yossarian discovers that it is possible to be discharged from military service because of insanity. Always looking for a way out, Yossarian claims that he is insane, only to find out that by claiming that he is insane he has proved that he is obviously sane—because any sane person would claim that he or she is insane to avoid flying bombing missions. Elsewhere, Catch-22 is defined as a law that is illegal to read. Ironically, the place where it is written that it is illegal is in Catch-22 itself. It is yet again defined as the law that the enemy is allowed to do anything that one can't keep him from doing. In short, then, Catch-22 is any paradoxical, circular reasoning that catches its victim in its illogic and serves those who have made the law. Catch-22 can be found in the novel not only where it is explicitly defined but also throughout the characters' stories, which are full of catches and instances of circular reasoning that trap unwitting bystanders in their snares—for instance, the ability of the powerful officer Milo Minderbinder to make great sums of money by trading among the companies that he himself owns.