Catch-1

Catch-22 ~ Joseph Heller

Yossarian is crazy. He remains in the hospital to avoid the war. He is crazy and everyone around him is crazy too. He says that outside the hospital "Men went mad and were rewarded with metals." this quote introduces the idea of "crazy" or not being sane which is already a reoccurring theme in the novel thus-far. Through Yossarian's attitude towards the war and even the idea of war in general you can get a sense of the true satirical nature Heller wrote this book in. Yossarian's argument with Clevinger illustrates this really well.  Clevinger is another officer in Yossarian's squadron and the two have it out. He says "Clevinger really thought he was right, but Yossarian had proof, because strangers he didn't know shot at him with canons every time he flew up into the air to drop bombs on them, and it wasn't funny at all." This statement is almost comical in the way it is worded because obviously people will not just sit back and take getting bombed like it is nothing. This quote really gets across Joseph Heller's anit-war message and introduces the idea that war itself is illogical, even comical, because the horrors that occur during a war are so often overlooked but if they occurred in an everyday situation it was be a travesty of unimaginable proportions.