Doc Daneeka
Doc Daneeka is a
fictional character in the
1961 novel
Catch-22, written by
Joseph Heller.
Doc is the squadron
physician at a
U.S. Army Air Corps base in
Pianosa during
World War II, and a friend of the novel's protagonist,
Yossarian. "Catch-22" itself is first explained to Yossarian when he asks Daneeka to excuse him from combat duty.
Doc was portrayed by
Jack Gilford in the 1970 film adaptation (see
Catch-22 (film)) of the novel directed by
Mike Nichols.
At home
Doc Daneeka was a physician in his hometown of
Brooklyn, where he initially established a failing practice. As the war effort needs more medical personnel, less doctors are around as Daneeka's competition. Eventually, Daneeka remains a minority whom dominate to some extent the medical field, thus patients have no where else to turn. This harvests an atmosphere for a thriving enterprise in which Daneeka earns a lucrative living until the military drafts him.
Doc describes only one experience of his practice at home in the book: a young couple who are unable to proliferate. Doc asks them how they go about doing "it" to which they look at each other with ingenuous and innocent smiles. He concludes they have no idea about sex and, with the aid of two accurately scaled dolls, shows how a male and female are to make love. They thank him for his help and go away to give it a try. Later, the husband returns and, punching him in the nose cries, "What are you, some kind of wise guy?"
At the war base
Daneeka appears as a petulant man, feeling beaten by the military for losing his advantage of being one of few doctors around back home. As a military doctor, Daneeka has the ability to choose whom of the pilots can be
grounded from needing to fly more missions, and whom must continue. Because of
Colonel Cathcart's competing attitude of increasing the missions everytime the men meet the requirement, pilots with successful fruition grovel for Daneeka to allow them grounding. Since Daneeka is miserably sour for losing out on his business advantage, he takes it out on the men by not grounding any.
Daneeka feels something must be physically wrong with himself, for he also vainly attempts to remove himself from the military effort, so he approaches
Gus and
Wes, his two nurses, to perform routine physical and check his temperature, which invariably remains a constant, healthy 96.8 degrees
fahrenheit.
Yossarian is Doc's only friend on the base. Yossarian, like the other pilots, continually begs for grounding, although he never successfully accomplishes the number of missions required. Nonetheless, he still asks. One day, while Yossarian explains his pitiful circumstances, Daneeka becomes the first, and only person in the book to detail the structured frameworking of what is formally known as "Catch-22"; a circular argument that prevents any of the men from removing themselves from combat.
Signed up as a doctor for the Army's Air Force, one of his requisites includes logging four hours per month in order to earn his paycheck. Since Daneeka experiences fears of flight, he convinced
McWatt to add his name to his flight roster so that his hours are recorded, yet does not need to leave the ground.
While McWatt performs a training flight, he accidentally flew too low, killing a fellow soldier,
Kid Sampson. Because of his tremendous grief, McWatt flies into a mountain and commits suicide. Since McWatt's flight roster included Daneeka's name, the military blindly assumed and declaringly pronounced that Daneeka also died on the flight. The irony, that Daneeka was standing next to the Colonel who affirmed this tragedy, is further enforced when Daneeka continues to argue that he did not die.
Colonel Cathcart and his 'mentor'
Colonel Korn invent an ingenius idea of writing and sending home letters personally to those who died in combat. To cover all circumstances, the letter reads more as a vague letter that could imply any type of mortal death of any form of relative. At home,
Doc Daneeka's wife receives one of these "personal" letters from the military through post master
ex-PFC Wintergreen, that her husband (father, brother, son) has died of an unfortunate plane crash. Included is a check from his GI insurance for $200 to finance his funeral. She then continues to receive donations and other insurances that Daneeka paid for. As the proceedings continue to accumulate, she later appears to be pleased that her husband is dead.
Daneeka, enraged with the thickheadedness of the military, writes home two letters to his wife, addressed by himself. His wife feels uncertain after acquiring the first and asks Cathcart if it is possible the military made a mistake, to which he assures her that is implausible. Daneeka futilely composes his second letter to which she now verifyingly believes to be a
hoax. The book makes note that she and her children move to a new place; she leaves no forwarding address, and no further reference of her exists throughout the rest of the story.
Daneeka soon begins to believe that he, may in fact, be dead. But before subscribing to such a belief, he once more goes to Gus and Wes for them to check him over and read his temperature of 96.8 to verify whether he could be dead. They mutually concur that he is in fact dead, for his temperature is well below an average reading of 98.6. They further augment credence to this claim by suggesting that since his temperature ranged so low, he could very well have been dead the entire time (throughout the book).
Doc's case parallels one of the themes of the book that the bureacratic system holds an impersonal attitude toward those who do not hold power in the higher echelons of the military branch (colonels and generals). There is major irony in his death. The government goes so far to shield the military through political correctness on paper trails as to ignore the blatant, visual proof that Daneeka did not die in the plane crash with pilot McWatt. The other sector of this irony involves his motives to not ground any of the airmen whom petitioned him, still turned on him, despite his dedicated loyalty.
