Catch-22 Thematic Essay

In life, we may all at times experience our own version of a catch-22; a frustrating situation in which one is trapped by contradictory regulations or conditions. (Dictionary. com). Our desired outcome of the situation appears unattainable due to the ridiculous rules we are to abide by. In the novel Catch-22, the author Joseph Heller makes his thematic statement clear; war traps you in a catch-22, and there’s no way of escaping it. Joseph Heller develops this thematic statement through the main character Yossarian, a bombardier who is caught in the middle of the Catch-22 of the Second World War, with little hopes of ever getting out.

As a bombardier in the war, Yossarian is ordered to fly bombing missions over enemy territory. These missions are extremely dangerous and put anyone who takes part in them at serious risk for being killed. Ironically, while the missions could very well get Yossarian killed, they are supposedly his only hope of ever getting out of the war alive. This is because once he flies enough missions, he will be sent home. (Or so his superior officers tell him). Each time Yossarian comes close to completing all of his missions, the colonels raise the number of missions.

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This way, no one completes their required number of missions, and no one gets sent home. Eventually, Yossarian becomes so fed up with the unjust bureaucracy and violence of the war, he abandons it altogether and secretly flees to Sweden. Although Yossarian did away with war, he knows that he will never be out of the dark. His commanding officers will be hot on his tail until he is found again and the never ending vicious cycle of Catch-22 will linger with him always. In the first chapter we are introduced to Yossarian, who has taken refuge from the war in an Italian Military Hospital because of a pain in his liver.

Lucky enough for Yossarian, his liver ailment is so short of being jaundice that it could not be treated, but he could not be discharged back out into war, either. Eventually, the pain in his liver disappears, but Yossarian can’t help but take advantage of the safe haven he is in. “Actually, the pain in his liver had gone away, but Yossarian didn’t say anything and the doctors never suspected. ” (7). This is the perfect portrayal of the fact that Yossarian will take advantage of any loophole he can find to avoid being on the battlefront.

Yossarian loathes the war so much, he will milk this “pain in his liver” for all it’s worth. Unfortunately, if we stand back and take a look at the big picture, Yossarian’s hospital stays are only temporary, and he must return to the war. In this specific instance, Yossarian eventually chooses to leave the hospital due to his deep annoyance with a patriotic Texan. No matter how many excuses Yossarian finds to avoid flying his missions, Catch-22 is always there to rear its ugly head. A little further into the book, Yossarian’s paranoia of being killed in the war becomes more apparent.

Yossarian is in the midst of battle with a fellow man named Clevinger while they argue about the enemy shooting at them. “’They’re trying to kill me,’ Yossarian told them calmly. ‘No one’s trying to kill you,’ Clevinger cried. ‘Then why are they shooting at me? ’ Yossarian asked. ‘They’re shooting at everyone,’ Clevinger answered. ‘They’re trying to kill everyone. ’ ‘And what difference does that make? ’” (16). Yossarian is trying to explain to Clevinger why he is not crazy for thinking that people are trying to kill him.

Clevinger views the war in a more casual manner because he knows it’s inevitable that the enemy is trying to kill them all. Yossarian takes the war very personally. He views it as the enemy pinpointing him, rather than his allies as a whole. Yossarian’s only concern is whether he gets out alive and he can’t help but be shaken up by the shots the enemy is firing. If he had his way, he would never step foot in the war again; but like always, the rule of Catch-22 stands like an indestructible wall between Yossarian and his freedom from the inhumane act that is war.

This last paragraph leads me to another quote which ties in to why Catch-22 prevents Yossarian from leaving the war at his own will due to his concern for his own safety. Here, Doc Daneeka explains why he cannot ground Yossarian due to his sanity. There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions.

Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t but if he was sane he had to fly them. (46) Yossarian wants more than anything to be relieved from the war, but once again, Catch-22 is there to say no. According to Catch-22, the moment Yossarian asks to be relieved would prove he is sane, which in turn would keep him in the war. This clever and foolproof rule works seamlessly with the colonels constantly raising the number of missions to keep Yossarian trapped in war he so longingly wants to be out of.

As the book progresses, Yossarian shows more angst toward his commanding officers and the war as a whole. He hangs tighter than ever on to his goal to make it out of the war alive, and in turn, loses respect for his own side. Here, Yossarian lashes out against his commanding officer Colonel Cathcart while talking to Clevinger: “’The enemy,’ retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, ‘is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don’t you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live. ’” (124).

Yossarian is opening his eyes to the fact that his side is no better than the enemy’s. He no longer sees the gap between his own side and the enemy because they’re both trying to kill him. In fact, Yossarian’s own superior officers are the true reason bullets are being shot at him, for they’re the ones who placed him into the war itself; and they enforced Catch-22 in the first place—the reason he is forced to remain in this mess. This remark against Colonel Cathcart shows how Yossarian defends himself in that it does not matter to him who wins the war, as long as he gets out alive.

Still, the problem that remains standing in Yossarian’s way is getting past Catch-22; and he knows there’s no easy way of escaping it. By chapter 39 Yossarian has become so fed up with the war, he refuses to fly anymore missions and walks around backward with a gun on his hip. Up until now, Yossarian has viewed the end of his missions like a light at the end of a tunnel. He’ll move closer to the light in attempt to reach it, but each time he’s nearly there, the light moves further away.

At this point we find Yossarian and one of his allies Milo on a plane without official leave on their way to Rome to look for a fellow man’s mistress and her kid sister. Milo makes it clear to Yossarian that he is ashamed of him and calls him an uncouth spectacle for refusing to fly anymore missions. Yossarian couldn’t care less about what Milo thinks. His only focus at this point is to make sure the mistress and her kid sister are all right. Yossarian’s disregard for the war and flying his missions brings about this ironic quote: “Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian’s fault.

The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them. ” (405). Usually we wouldn’t find that exercising one’s freedoms might very well get those freedoms taken from you, but in this case, the retaliation Yossarian is demonstrating could potentially cause America to lose the war, along with its freedom. Yossarian’s refusal to continue flying missions tells us that he knows completing your missions is impossible because the colonels will always raise the amount before you finish. Though, in Yossarian’s mind, he has no other choice.

If doing what’s he’s supposed to won’t get him away from the rule of Catch-22 or the war, going against his superiors is his only option. Near the end of the book, after Yossarian is arrested and brought back from Rome, he is presented with an unexpected offer by Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn. Since Catch-22 prevents them from plainly sending Yossarian home, they present a deal. They will free Yossarian from his missions and send him home on the grounds that he must agree to like Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn and put in a good word about them back home.

Yossarian knows that acceptance of the deal would be a sick betrayal to all his friends who have died in the war, but the thought of going home relishes in his mind. Yossarian accepts. An unexpected twist of fate occurs when Yossarian begins to have flashbacks of an impactful mission to Avignon and his friend Snowden’s tragic death. On the mission, Yossarian was bandaging a wound on Snowden’s leg to try and save his life, only to lift up Snowden’s shirt and have his intestines spill out all over him from a gash in his stomach and chest.

Reliving this traumatizing event triggers something inside of Yossarian and he decides that he can no longer accept the Colonels’ offer because in doing so, he would sell himself short and forsake the memory of his dead friends. An important message Yossarian discovers through Snowden’s death helps him make his ultimate decision. “It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden’s secret. Drop him out a winder and he’ll fall. Set fire to him and he’ll burn. Bury him and he’ll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage.

That was Snowden’s secret. ” (440). The “secret” revealed to him here is that man is made of inanimate matter and that no human hands can restore life to a body once it has been destroyed by flak, disease, or drowning. (Sparknotes. com). Without spirit, man is nothing but worthless matter. This is the climax of the novel. Yossarian has the epiphany that by remaining in the war and striving to stay alive, he is losing his spirit and amounting to nothing more than garbage. Then again, taking the colonels’ deal and abandoning all the respect he has for his dead friends reduces him to garbage as well.

Knowing these things, Yossarian decides to take neither route and run away to Sweden, completely rejecting the framework behind Catch-22. Although he knows he’ll have officers from the war coming to track him down, Yossarian is confident in his decision to abandon everything that is the war, and gain back his spirit. In conclusion, we see the author developing the theme through Yossarian’s experiences in the war and the actions he takes. At the start of the novel, Yossarian looks for every way he can to avoid being on the battlefront, but inevitably, the war has caught Yossarian in a catch-22, and nothing he can do can change that.

By the end of the novel Yossarian opens his eyes to how dehumanizing the bureaucracy of the war is, and takes life into his own hands by separating himself from the war and Catch-22 as much as he can. The way I see it, it would have been impossible for Yossarian to have completely eliminated the war or Catch-22 from his life. His escape act has made him a wanted man. Still, I think Yossarian did the best thing he could from the options he had, and regained his dignity and spirit by doing so. This novel started off a bit slow for me. I felt overwhelmed by the constant introduction of so many new characters, and I wasn’t seeing a storyline.

Halfway through the book, things began to fall into place and I noticed how dynamic Yossarian’s character was becoming. In fact, I got so into the novel, that the part explaining Yossarian’s incident with Snowden made me a little emotional. Overall, I would recommend this book to other students because it was entertaining (SO much irony), and it showed me a lot about how unjust war can be. I would only hope that if I were ever put in a situation like Yossarian in which I was a pawn in some sort of dehumanizing war, I would have the courage to stand up to bureaucracy and find a way out.



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