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{{Use mdy dates|date=August 2022}}
{{Short description|Fictional character in the novel Catch-22}}
'''Major Major Major Major''' is a fictional character in [[Joseph Heller]]'s 1961 novel ''[[Catch-22]]''. He was named "Major Major Major" by his father, as a joke &ndash; passing up such lesser possibilities as "Drum Major, Minor Major, Sergeant Major, or C Sharp Major".{{sfn|Heller|1998|p=347}} Once he joined the army during [[World War II]], he was quickly promoted to the rank of [[Major (rank)|Major]] due to "an [[IBM|I.B.M.]] machine with a sense of humor almost as keen as his father's".{{sfn|Heller|1998|p=347}}{{sfn|Beidler|1996|p=49}} His full name and rank are the title of chapter 9.{{sfn|Potts|1995|p=20}}{{sfn|Beidler|1998|p=4&ndash;5}} He has an uncanny resemblance to real-life actor [[Henry Fonda]], which scholar [[Philip Beidler|Philip D. Beidler]] calls "one of the novel's great absurd jokes".{{sfn|Beidler|1998|p=4&ndash;5}}
==In the novel==
Heller echoes the eponymous character in [[Edwin Arlington Robinson]]'s 1910 poem "[[Miniver Cheevy]]" in his initial description of Maj. Major as "born too late and too mediocre".{{sfn|Heller|1998|p=345}}{{sfn|Beidler|1996|p=49}} The character is further described as having "three strikes against him from the beginning &ndash; his mother, his father, and [[Henry Fonda]], to whom he bore a sickly resemblance almost from the moment of his birth. Long before he even suspected who Henry Fonda was, he found himself the subject of unflattering comparisons everywhere he went. Total strangers saw fit to deprecate him, with the result that he was stricken early with a guilty fear of people and an obsequious impulse to apologize to society for the fact that he was not Henry Fonda."{{sfn|Heller|1998|p=345}}{{sfn|Beidler|1996|p=49}} After his promotion to squadron commander by [[Colonel Cathcart]], "People who had hardly noticed his resemblance to Henry Fonda before now never ceased discussing it, and there were even those who hinted sinisterly that Major Major had been elevated to squadron commander because he resembled Henry Fonda. Captain Black, who had aspired to the position himself, maintained that Major Major really was Henry Fonda "but was too chickenshit to admit it."{{sfn|Heller|1998|p=349}}{{sfn|Beidler|1996|p=49}}
==Inspiration==
Working from the basis of a resemblance to Henry Fonda, and from the thesis that people in the novel were, contrary to Heller's claims, heavily inspired by people and events from his own wartime experiences, Daniel Setzer deduces that the real-world inspiration for the character of Maj. Major was Randall C. Casada, who was Heller's squadron commander when he was stationed on [[Corsica]].{{sfn|Setzer|2008|p=20}}
Whether intentionally or not, Maj. Major's wartime career resembles Henry Fonda's own, in that Fonda, after transferring to service HQ in New York City, was abruptly promoted to [[Lieutenant (junior grade)|Lieutenant Junior Grade]] in a style similar to that of Maj. Major's promotion.{{sfn|Beidler|1998|p=166}}{{sfn|Beidler|1996|p=57}}
==In other media==
Maj. Major was portrayed by [[Bob Newhart]] in [[Mike Nichols]]' 1970 [[Catch-22 (film)|film adaptation of the novel]]. Beidler asks, rhetorically, what to make of this, given that Newhart's lack of any resemblance to Fonda eliminates the entire joke.{{sfn|Beidler|1998|p=4&ndash;5}}{{sfn|Beidler|1998|p=166}} He provides one answer, namely that the joke was simply discarded because Henry Fonda himself no longer physically resembled the Henry Fonda of the 1955 film ''[[Mister Roberts (1955 film)|Mister Roberts]]'', let alone the Fonda of World War II.{{sfn|Beidler|1996|p=67}}
Maj. Major was portrayed by [[Lewis Pullman]] in the 2019 [[Catch-22 (miniseries)|miniseries]] based on the novel. His promotion was to enable his attendance at the Group Leaders' Allocation and Requisition Procedural Advisory Board (GLARPAB) meetings.
==Literary analysis==
[[Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute]] Professor of Literature Alan Nadel observes that Maj. Major is "perhaps the exemplary null set in the novel". Everything about the character, he states, signifies nothing: The character's name is an empty repetition of "the name of authority". The character's promotion to squadron commander is meaningless. ("'You're the new squadron commander,' Colonel Cathcart had shouted rudely across the railroad ditch to him. 'But don't think it means anything, because it doesn't. All it means is that you're the new squadron commander.'"{{sfn|Heller|1998|p=349}}) Even the character's physical identity is not his own, but rather that of Henry Fonda.{{sfn|Nadel|1995|p=172}} Beidler describes him as "the ultimate product ''of'' and operational cog ''in'' the ''Catch-22'' machine" and "the definitive good Joe in a bad situation".{{sfn|Beidler|1996|p=49}}
Relating ''Catch-22'' characters to William J. Goode's [[sociology|sociological]] definition of ineptitude, Jerry M. Lewis and Stanford W. Gregory describe Maj. Major as the "clearest portrayal of an inept role" in the novel. They give three reasons for this: Maj. Major "always followed the rules, yet no-one liked him or trusted him"; his swift promotion to the rank of Major where he then remains is "a clear foreshadowing of the [[Peter Principle]]"; and the anathema to Maj. Major of being identified with Fonda, a symbol of competence, causes Maj. Major to retreat from everyone around him, making efforts to hide and to become, in the novel's words, a recluse in "the midst of a few foreign acres teeming with more than two hundred people".{{sfn|Heller|1998|p=388}} Lewis and Gregory state that ''Catch-22'' supports a thesis that goes beyond Goode's, namely that the inept can identify their own ineptitude, and become active participants in its own institutionalization; whereas Goode asserts that the inept only ever have a passive role and can do little but accept their lot in life.{{sfn|Lewis|Gregory|1978|p=65&ndash;68}}
Stephen W. Potts, a lecturer in literature, describes chapter 9 of the novel as making "broad use of the [[literary motif|rhetorical motif]]s of contradiction, negation, and deflation", from the [[echolalia]] of the chapter title ("Major Major Major Major") onwards. Potts also discusses Maj. Major's father.{{sfn|Potts|1995|p=20}}
== References ==
'''Notes'''
{{reflist|30em}}
'''Bibliography'''
* {{cite journal|title=Mr. Roberts and American Remembering; or, Why Major Major Major Major Looks Like Henry Fonda|author-link=Philip Beidler|first=Philip D.|last=Beidler|journal=Journal of American Studies|volume=30|pages=47&ndash;64|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1996|doi=10.1017/S0021875800024312|s2cid=143830992 }}
* {{cite book|author-link=Philip Beidler|title=The Good War's greatest hits: World War II and American remembering|first=Philip D.|last=Beidler|publisher=University of Georgia Press|year=1998|isbn=9780820320014}}
* {{cite book|author-link=Joseph Heller|first=Joseph|last=Heller|chapter=Major Major Major Major (from ''Catch-22'')|editor1-first=Paula|editor1-last=Geyh|title=Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology|url=https://archive.org/details/postmodernameric00paul|url-access=registration|location=New York|publisher=W. W. Norton|year=1998|pages=[https://archive.org/details/postmodernameric00paul/page/345 345]&ndash;362}}
* {{cite book|title=Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age|first=Alan|last=Nadel|publisher=Duke University Press|year=1995|isbn=9780822316992|chapter=The Invasion of Postmodernism: The Catch-22 of the Bay of Pigs and Liberty Valance|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/containmentcultu00nade}}
* {{cite book|title=From here to absurdity: the moral battlefields of Joseph Heller|chapter=''Catch-22'': From here to absurdity|volume=36|series=The Milford series: Popular writers of today|first=Stephen W.|last=Potts|edition=2nd|publisher=Wildside Press LLC|year=1995|isbn=9780893704186}}
* {{cite journal|journal=Qualitative Sociology|volume=1|issue=1|pages=58&ndash;78|doi=10.1007/BF02429887|title=Extensions to the sociology of the inept|first1=Jerry M.|last1=Lewis|first2=Stanford W.|last2=Gregory|year=1978 |s2cid=143740928}}
* {{cite web|title=Historical Sources for the Events in Joseph Heller's Novel, Catch-22|first=Daniel|last=Setzer|year=2008|url=http://home.comcast.net/~dhsetzer/heller/JHeller.pdf|archive-url=https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20120905114742/http://home.comcast.net/~dhsetzer/heller/JHeller.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-date=September 5, 2012|access-date=March 13, 2012}}
'''Further reading'''
* {{cite book|title=Joseph Heller's Catch-22|series=Bloom's modern critical interpretations|first=Harold|last=Bloom|publisher=Bloom's Literary Criticism|year=2007|isbn=9780791096178}}&mdash;Maj. Major is discussed in numerous places throughout this book.
{{Catch-22}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Major, Major}}
[[Category:Fictional United States Air Force personnel]]
[[Category:Fictional majors]]
[[Category:Catch-22 characters]]