Catch 22 The Death of Kid Sampson

image: Two men watch from the coast as a plane flies low over the sea. In the sea behind the plane is a bloody pool with a surfbord floating nearby. A crowd of soldiers on the beach below are also looking on.

One of a series of works by the artist depicting scenes from Joseph Heller's novel 'Catch 22'.

[Yossarian] studied every floating object fearfully for some sign of Clevinger and Orr, prepared for any great shock but the shock McWatt gave him one day with the plane that came blasting suddenly into sight out of the distant stillness and hurtled mercilessly along the shore line with a great growling, clattering roar over the bobbing raft on which blond pale Kid Sampson, his naked sides scrawny even from so far away, leaped clownishly up to touch it the exact same moment some arbitrary gust of wind or minor miscalculation of McWatt's senses dropped the speeding plane down just low enough for a propeller to slice him half away. (pg 388, Vintage 1994)

[Yossarian] studied every floating object fearfully for some sign of Clevinger and Orr, prepared for any great shock but the shock McWatt gave him one day with the plane that came blasting suddenly into sight out of the distant stillness and hurtled mercilessly along the shore line with a great growling, clattering roar over the bobbing raft on which blond pale Kid Sampson, his naked sides scrawny even from so far away, leaped clownishly up to touch it the exact same moment some arbitrary gust of wind or minor miscalculation of McWatt's senses dropped the speeding plane down just low enough for a propeller to slice him half away.

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