Catch-22

During the second half of World War II, a soldier named Yossarian is stationed with his Air
Force squadron on the island of Pianosa, near the Italian coast in the Mediterranean Sea.
Yossarian and his friends endure a nightmarish, absurd existence defined by bureaucracy and
violence: they are inhuman resources in the eyes of their blindly ambitious superior officers.
The squadron is thrown thoughtlessly into brutal combat situations and bombing runs in
which it is more important for the squadron members to capture good aerial photographs of
explosions than to destroy their targets. Their colonels continually raise the number of
missions that they are required to fly before being sent home, so that no one is ever sent
home. Still, no one but Yossarian seems to realize that there is a war going on; everyone
thinks he is crazy when he insists that millions of people are trying to kill him.

Yossarian’s story forms the core of the novel, so most events are refracted through his point
of view. Yossarian takes the whole war personally: unswayed by national ideals or abstract
principles, Yossarian is furious that his life is in constant danger through no fault of his own.
He has a strong desire to live and is determined to be immortal or die trying. As a result, he
spends a great deal of his time in the hospital, faking various illnesses in order to avoid the
war. As the novel progresses through its loosely connected series of recurring stories and
anecdotes, Yossarian is continually troubled by his memory of Snowden, a soldier who died
in his arms on a mission when Yossarian lost all desire to participate in the war. Yossarian is
placed in ridiculous, absurd, desperate, and tragic circumstances—he sees friends die and
disappear, his squadron get bombed by its own mess officer, and colonels and generals
volunteer their men for the most perilous battle in order to enhance their own reputations.

Catch-22 is a law defined in various ways throughout the novel. First, Yossarian discovers
that it is possible to be discharged from military service because of insanity. Always looking
for a way out, Yossarian claims that he is insane, only to find out that by claiming that he is
insane he has proved that he is obviously sane—since any sane person would claim that he or
she is insane in order to avoid flying bombing missions. Elsewhere, Catch-22 is defined as a
law that is illegal to read. Ironically, the place where it is written that it is illegal is in Catch-
22 itself. It is yet again defined as the law that the enemy is allowed to do anything that one
can’t keep him from doing. In short, then, Catch-22 is any paradoxical, circular reasoning that
catches its victim in its illogic and serves those who have made the law. Catch-22 can be
found in the novel not only where it is explicitly defined but also throughout the characters’
stories, which are full of catches and instances of circular reasoning that trap unwitting
bystanders in their snares—for instance, the ability of the powerful officer Milo
Minderbinder to make great sums of money by trading among the companies that he himself
owns.

As Yossarian struggles to stay alive, a number of secondary stories unfold around him. His
friend Nately falls in love with a whore from Rome and woos her constantly, despite her
continued indifference and the fact that her kid sister constantly interferes with their romantic
rendezvous. Finally, she falls in love with Nately, but he is killed on his very next mission.
When Yossarian brings her the bad news, she blames him for Nately’s death and tries to stab
him every time she sees him thereafter. Another subplot follows the rise of the black-market
empire of Milo Minderbinder, the squadron’s mess hall officer. Milo runs a syndicate in
which he borrows military planes and pilots to transport food between various points in
Europe, making a massive profit from his sales. Although he claims that “everyone has a
share” in the syndicate, this promise is later proven false. Milo’s enterprise flourishes
nonetheless, and he is revered almost religiously by communities all over Europe.

The novel draws to a close as Yossarian, troubled by Nately’s death, refuses to fly any more
missions. He wanders the streets of Rome, encountering every kind of human horror—rape,
disease, murder. He is eventually arrested for being in Rome without a pass, and his superior
officers, Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn, offer him a choice. He can either face a court-
martial or be released and sent home with an honorable discharge. There is only one
condition: in order to be released, he must approve of Cathcart and Korn and state his support
for their policy, which requires all the men in the squadron to fly eighty missions. Although
he is tempted by the offer, Yossarian realizes that to comply would be to endanger the lives
of other innocent men. He chooses another way out, deciding to desert the army and flee to
neutral Sweden. In doing so, he turns his back on the dehumanizing machinery of the
military, rejects the rule of Catch-22, and strives to gain control of his own life.