Chapter 4: Doc Daneeka

In Chapter 4 of Catch-22, the narrator explains that Hungry Joe is crazy and Yossarian is trying to give him advice, but Hungry Joe won't listen because he thinks Yossarian is crazy. Doc Daneeka tells Yossarian that his own problems are worse than Hungry Joe's because the war has interrupted his lucrative medical practice.

Yossarian remembers trying to disrupt a meeting in Captain Black's intelligence tent by asking unanswerable questions, which led to a rule that only people who never ask questions can ask questions. This rule was approved by Colonel Cathcart and Lieutenant Colonel Korn, who also approved the construction of a skeet-shooting range at which Yossarian never hits anything. Dunbar frequently shoots skeet because he hates it and believes that it makes time pass more slowly, but he argues with Clevinger about this theory. Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen has caused a panic among the officers in Rome by telephoning them and saying only "T. S. Eliot." Although Wintergreen intends this as a response to a memo from a colonel about poets who make money, General Peckem assumes it is a coded message and becomes anxious as a result.