He resolves to flee to Sweden, where he believes Orr now lives, to wait out the end of the conflict. Yossarian thus finds a way to escape his Catch-22 altogether: he will no longer fly, nor will he be a lackey to his commanding officers. The deal’s only catch is simple: Yossarian must pretend to like his commanding officers.Īlthough Yossarian is tempted by this deal, the chaplain subtly convinces him that it would be unfair to his fellow men. Cathcart and Korn offer him two options: court-martial, which would place him in prison, or a deal sending him home. After a final visit to Rome, which is now devastated by war, Yossarian says he will no longer fly. But as his friends die, Yossarian begins to feel it is genuinely unjust for Cathcart to raise the number of required missions, especially since the war is almost over, and many missions are no longer militarily necessary. In the beginning, he is satisfied merely avoiding his own duties whenever possible. Yossarian, too, undergoes a slow change of heart over the course of the novel. Although the chaplain’s faith is tested throughout, he eventually decides that he does believe in God, and that only by standing up to Cathcart, Korn, and other superiors will he aid the soldiers with whom he serves. Government officials investigating the group for supposed forgeries of letters settle on the chaplain as their prime suspect he is tortured and threatened with imprisonment, but later set free. Cathcart, Korn, and other higher-ups rebuff the chaplain. Meanwhile, the chaplain has been crusading on behalf of Yossarian, now his friend, to send the pilots who have flown enough missions home. Nately, Havermeyer, and Dobbs (another comrade) are killed on the same mission. McWatt, buzzing the camp once more, kills Kid Sampson by accident and, in recognition of this, flies his plane into a mountain. Orr has to crash land his damaged plane in the Mediterranean Sea and floats away on a raft. Dunbar, another friend of Yossarian’s, is “disappeared” by the military brass, for his complaints about unnecessary bombing runs. Soldiers begin dying or disappearing on a more regular basis. At this point the novel takes a more serious turn. In this mission Yossarian has a close brush with death, as his plane is nearly downed by enemy fire, and he runs off to Rome where he meets a woman named Luciana, with whom he spends a single night. Dreedle is mostly concerned with his mistress, and Peckem does not care what gets bombed so long as bombs fall in an appealing “bomb pattern” for documentary photographs.Ĭathcart signs the men up for a dangerous mission over Bologna. Korn merely wants a promotion to Cathcart’s job, and Cathcart wants to be made general, replacing Dreedle and Peckem, the two warring commanders in charge of the Italian campaign. Yossarian believes this is unjust, but Cathcart and his assistant Korn do not care. This is called a Catch-22.Ĭathcart, the Colonel in charge of the group, keeps raising the number of missions required for soldiers to be sent home. Only those crazy enough to want to fly are crazy enough to be grounded. Daneeka introduces one of the novel’s themes by answering “no”-because Yossarian is sane enough to ask to be grounded, he is sane enough to fly. Yossarian asks Doc Daneeka, the group’s medic, if he can be grounded from flying on account of insanity. The narrator goes on to introduce a wide-ranging cast of characters, including Orr, Yossarian’s bizarre handyman of a tent-mate Clevinger, a Harvard-educated man whose plane later disappears into thin air Havermeyer, who loves flying dangerous missions McWatt, a daredevil who constantly “buzzes” the camp with his plane Nately, son of a wealthy businessman, who is in love with a Roman prostitute and Chief White Halfoat, a Native American intending to die of pneumonia. The chaplain feels uncomfortable talking to most officers, but Yossarian is kind to him, and invites him to return in the future. At the start of the novel, Yossarian, in the hospital with a fake liver ailment, is visited by a chaplain named Tappman. The novel takes place on Pianosa, a small Italian island not far from Rome, at the end of the Second World War.Ĭatch-22 is narrated in a fragmentary manner, meaning events are often sketched out in non-chronological order, to be filled in as other stories progress. Catch-22 is a tragicomic novel detailing the efforts of a man named Yossarian, a captain in the US Army Air Force, to avoid flying any more combat missions.
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