Hungry Joe
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Hungry Joe is a character in Joseph Heller's classic novel Catch-22.
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[edit] Women
Hungry Joe is noted for constantly trying to photograph women nude, claiming to be a photographer for Life Magazine (which he was before the war). Although he is sometimes successful in getting the girls to pose for him with his "wild cajolery", his pictures never come out and he never "gets in", as in his haste he can not decide what to do first - photograph or "furgle" them. His haste comes from his worshipping the female form, and his interpretation that their presence is a "cosmic oversight" which could be rectified at any instant. To persuade them, he shouts, "Me heap big photographer from Life magazine. Heap big picture on heap big cover. I make you big Hollywood star... Multi dinero. Multi divorces. Multi ficky-fick all day long. Sì, sì, sì!"
[edit] Idiosyncrasies
Small noises annoy him, such as Aarfy smacking when puffs on his pipe, Orr tinkering away, McWatt snapping his cards when he plays blackjack, or Dobbs' teeth chattering incessantly. Even the ticking of a clock drives him mad.
[edit] Nightmares
Hungry Joe is one of the few characters in the novel who successfully completes the required numbers of missions but, like the rest of them, is not allowed to go home because of the "catch". He enjoys doing missions since that is the only time he is ever able to sleep without having nightmares. When he does have nightmares, which is almost every night, he screams in his sleep incessantly, but lies to other that he is even having these dreams. His nightmarish screams caused nightmares in other impressionable men such as Captain Flume and Dobbs.
One night Havermeyer's shooting of mice sends Hungry Joe, in the next tent, over the edge and he comes out shooting into Havermeyer's tent with his own .45. He then falls down into a ditch and is found babbling about snakes and spiders even though there was nothing in the ditch.
[edit] Huple's cat
Hungry Joe shares a tent with Huple on the wrong side of the railway tracks. Huple's pet cat repeatedly sleeps on his face, suffocating him until the last moment when he wakes up and Hungry Joe wins fist fights against the cat. Hungry Joe eventually suffocates to death when he fails to wake up.
[edit] Film
In the movie adaptation of Catch-22 (Directed by Mike Nichols) Hungry Joe is instead killed by McWatt by accident when he tries (as he often does) to scare Yossarian by flying his plane at low altitudes overhead of him. McWatt, in scaring Yossarian, flies into Hungry Joe, chopping him in half with the plane's propellor blades. In the novel, it was Kid Sampson that suffered this fate instead of Hungry Joe.
