Milo Milo Milo

Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, is about a United States Air Force squadron based on the island of Pianosa, off of the west coast of Italy. The novel follows Captain John Yossarian and some of his fellow airmen, as they try to fulfill their mission requirements so that they can return home, and survive the war at the same time. Unfortunately, their commanding officers have hyper inflated egos and wish to be the best squadron of the entire United States Air Force, and raises the mission requirement to make his group look better. However, he often does this when many of the airmen have either just exceeded the previous value, or are very close to reaching the previous value. This infuriates many of the airmen, and causes many of them to plot the deaths of their commanding officers, though these plots never lead to murder.

One of the well respected airmen on Pianosa is Milo Minderbinder, the pilot who never flies planes. Rather, he is the mess officer, and feeds the airmen. However, his sole purpose in the book isn’t to just be a scheming mess officer. Milo symbolizes capitalism and greed. He and his “syndicate” buy and sell items on the black market. He is very money-minded, and will sell or buy anything to make a profit, even if he is taking money from his fellow airmen. When discussing the purchase of eggs for the squadron, Milo explains that “I make a profit of three and a quarter cents apiece when I sell them to me and a profit of two and three quarter cents apiece when I buy them back from me. That’s a total profit of six cents an egg. I lose only two cents an egg when I sell them to the mess halls at five cents apiece, and that’s how I can make a profit buying eggs for seven cents apiece and selling them for five cents apiece. I pay only one cent apiece at the hen when I buy them in Sicily” (231). In addition to his complicated systems for making a profit, Milo often buys materials in bulk in the hope that he can sell them. However, this doesn’t always work, and in one scenario, he is left with a huge amount of Egyptian cotton, which he covers in chocolate and sells to the airmen on Pianosa. Milo knows that the chocolate covered cotton will make the airmen ill, but he continues to sell it anyway because he can make a profit off of it, displaying his greed and lack of concern for his peers (262). Milo also sells wares through his group M & M Enterprises to the Germans, infuriating his commanding officers who send M.P.’s to capture the German pilots at the airfield.