Opening Line
No definite rules exist regarding the use of metaphorical language in the opening line of a novel. Some do; some don’t. Pride and Prejudice does, for instance. Moby-Dick most assuredly does not. Catch-22 exists in the ambiguous netherworld between the two; maybe Yossarian is metaphorically in love with the Chaplain but then again maybe not so much. As for this book, ambiguity flies out the window just ten words in and never looks back:
“The flying ship of Professor Lucifer sang through the skies like a silver arrow; the bleak white steel of it, gleaming in the bleak blue emptiness of the evening.”
What's Up with the Ball and Cross, Anyway?
The first shocking and unexpected turn of events in the novel occurs just a few pages after the above introduction. Professor Lucifer—if that is his real name—picks up a monk named Michael, engages him in a quick debate about good and evil and proceeds to unceremoniously drop him straight onto the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Before that twist occurs, however, the author introduces the destination in another example of the metaphor-rich prose which characterizes the story:
“A plain of sad-coloured cloud lay along the level of the top of the Cathedral dome, so that the ball and the cross looked like a buoy riding on a leaden sea.”
The Asylum
The novel opens amid an action sequence that is seemingly a set piece all but unrelated to what follows; kind of like the opening sequences of a Bond or Indiana Jones movie. Ultimately, the bulk of the novel’s story focuses on two Scotsman with highly different approaches to religion; one’s a devoted Catholic and the other the editor of an atheist newspaper. Both they and Father Michael eventually wind up inside an asylum and, like most everything else in the book, the asylum is highly symbolic. As one of the men observes:
“All England has turned into a lunatic asylum in order to prove us lunatics.”
Like Yossarian’s feelings toward the Chaplain, however, this may not be as unambiguously metaphorical as it seems.
The World According to Turnbull
The Scottish editor of the atheist newspaper is a man named Turnbull. The prolonged debate which brings he and the other Scot—MacIan—almost to the point of a deadly duel turns on a difference of perception about blasphemy. Not that Turnbull has done much to alleviate the potential for such misunderstandings:
“Every day his blasphemies looked more glaring, and every day the dust lay thicker upon them. It made him feel as if he were moving in a world of idiots.”
The Moon
The narrator offers a unique insight into the heavenly bodies upon which humans depend so much. The sun, it seems, is invisible because it cannot be seen properly by human eyes. That may be questionable, but don’t panic: the metaphorical imagery goes all poetic in the contrasting commentary on the moon which is, the narrator asserts:
“a much simpler thing; a naked and nursery sort of thing. It hangs in the sky quite solid and quite silver and quite useless; it is one huge celestial snowball.”
