Shanghaied By a Faulty Anode

"...and a bald and pedantic cetologist from the zoology department at Harvard who had been shanghaied ruthlessly into the Medical Corps by a faulty anode in an I.B.M. machine and spent his sessions with the dying colonel trying to discuss Moby Dick with him" (Heller, 15).

This is an obvious criticism of the draft process at the time and how unfair it was. Some were called to service for their professional skills, and it was shown in this quote that mistakes were made that did not utilize skills properly. Heller gives this example as one to expose a flawed system of selection, arbitrary and unfair at best.