Yossarian

Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, is about a United States Air Force squadron based on the island of Pianosa, off of the west coast of Italy. The novel follows Captain John Yossarian and some of his fellow airmen, as they try to fulfill their mission requirements so that they can return home. Unfortunately, their commanding officers raise the mission requirements as soon as most of the airmen reach the previous requirement, keeping the airmen in service longer than they would like to be.

Captain John Yossarian is a rather interesting character in that there is always something wrong with him, rather, he feigns that there is always something wrong with him. When the reader first encounters Yossarian, he “was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice. The doctors were puzzled by the fact that it wasn’t quite jaundice. If it became jaundice they could treat it. If it didn’t become jaundice and went away they could discharge him. But this just being short of jaundice all the time confused them” (7). Really, he is just using illness as an excuse to stay grounded, instead of flying more missions. Yossarian believes that he has been completely wronged by the system put in place by Colonel Cathcart. Whenever Cathcart raises the number of missions, Yossarian has either just passed the previous number, or he is only a few missions away from reaching the previous number. Many of his peers call Yossarian a “complainer”, but he is one of the only airmen who sees the injustice being dealt upon the airmen by their superiors (122). Yossarian only resents the increase in the number of required missions because like most men, he is scared of death. Rather than be called into action, Yossarian often runs off to Rome to spend time with loose women, or squirrels his way into the hospital. Yossarian wasn’t always prone to tucking his tail between his legs and running for safety. When he and his crew were bombing the bridge at Ferrara, instead of leaving immediately after they had made their first pass, Yossarian made his crew fly back for a second pass to drop their bombs. If they had dropped them during the first pass, they would have missed. Yossarian was hailed for his bravery after his heroism at Ferrara, and was promoted to Captain for his efforts. However, Yossarian lost a fellow airman, Kraft that day. One can assume that this loss caused Yossarian to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which would explain why Yossarian is so apprehensive to fly more missions afterwards. This diagnosis would also explain why Yossarian is always afraid that there are people waiting to in the brush to attack him.