"It was a vile and muddy war, and Yossarian was capable of living without it--living forever, perhaps. Only a small fraction of his countrymen would be willing to give up their lives to win it, and it was not his goal to be among them. . . . That men would die was an issue of necessity; which men would die, however, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of everything but circumstance." (Heller p.127).
This narrative portrays traces of Yossarian's, .
" efforts through the use of caution, fearfulness, defiance, deception, stratagem, and treason, through faking illness, clowning around, and poisoning the company's food using laundry soap--to avoid being persecuted by circumstance, a force represented in the book as Catch-22." (Kiley P. 41).
.
Choi 3.
In a military bureaucracy, the soldiers in Catch 22 had to find a way to escape from the unjust ruling created by the bureaucracy. Rules such as catch 22 were simply unfair, and there was no way around it. The only way to defeat it was figure out a way to run away and escape. This meant acting a certain way to persuade others into believing one's specially crafted tactics were simple acts caused by insanity. Yossarian had a partner by the name of Orr who shows signs of insanity, but in truth, he is really sane. Yossarian is inspired by his actions later on and realized the brilliance of it. Orr was a pilot who wants to leave, but couldn't ever go home since Colonel Cathcart continued to increase the number of missions. He figures out a way to beat the system and escape the catch-22 by acting like a simpleton for the entire story. Everyone overlooks him as a clown who is shot down on all of the missions he flies. The genius part about it is that Orr never crashed because he was shot at. Every time he flew, he deliberately crashed his plane to prepare himself to escape. Only Yossarian understands the depth of Orr's preparation and only at the very end of the novel does he find out.
