When Clevinger became their scapegoat

Catch-22 is perhaps one of the most original novels of the 20th century, that, while being outrageously hilarious, mirrors human nature with a kind of accuracy not often seen in fictional novels. It mocks and satirizes the evil in people, especially when they are subject to conditions where their raw nature can come out unhindered, not bounded by any limitations. Such as in World War II, the background of this story.

The entire novel is as funny as funny can get, but towards the end of the eighth chapter it takes a serious tone for the first time. And the seriousness of it is so powerfully presented, it gave me an episode of depression after reading it. Depression not just regarding the character in action, but over the harsh truth about humans that is so starkly depicted in those few words. I'll quote them for you.

But before I do that, here's a brief summary of the scene that's happened till the quote: Clevinger, a cadet for the US Army, is brought on trial in front of the US military Action Board in his camp - consisting of three men: "a bloated colonel with big fat mustache", Major Metcalf, and Lieutenant Scheisskopf - for conspiring to overthrow the cadet officers appointed by a paranoid Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who is frantic that if nothing is done about it, Clevinger will one day overthrow the world. After a long and very hilarious trial, Clevinger is found guilty, without any evidence or relevant claims, and is sentenced to walk fifty-seven punishment tours. A punishment tour for Clevinger was fifty minutes of a weekend hour spent pacing back and forth before the provost marshal's building with a ton of an unloaded rifle on his shoulder. (And just for reference, Yossarian, whose name is mentioned below, is the unbelievably stupid and funny protagonist of the novel.)

These two paragraphs follow and conclude the chapter:

It was all very confusing to Clevinger. There were many strange things taking place, but the strangest of all, to Clevinger, was the hatred, the brutal, uncloaked, inexorable hatred of the members of the Action Board, glazing their unforgiving expressions with a hard, vindictive surface, glowing in their narrowed eyes malignantly like inextinguishable coals. Clevinger was stunned to discover it. They would have lynched him if they could. They were three grown men and he was a boy, and they hated him and wished him dead. They had hated him before he came, hated him while he was there, hated him after he left, carried their hatred for him away malignantly like some pampered treasure after they separated from each other and went to their solitude.

Yossarian had done his best to warn him the night before.

"You haven't got a chance, kid," he told him glumly. "They hate Jews."
"But I'm not Jewish," answered Clevinger.
"It will make no difference," Yossarian promised, and Yossarian was right. "They're after everybody."

Clevinger recoiled from their hatred as though from a blinding light. These three men who hated him spoke his language and wore his uniform, but he saw their loveless faces set immutably into cramped, mean lines of hostility and understood instantly that nowhere in the world, not in all the fascist tanks or planes or submarines, not in the bunkers behind the machine guns or mortars or behind the blowing flame throwers, not even among all the expert gunners of the crack Hermann Goering Antiaircraft Division or among the grisly connivers in all the beer halls in Munich and everywhere else, were there men who hated him more.

That quote, right there, SPEAKS to me!

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