Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he were sane he had to fly them. All he had to do was ask and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions.

The insane people are the ones who show no concern for their safety and thus fly missions.Īs Heller writes: “There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Our protagonist knows that, if a man is deemed insane he no longer has to fly missions, but showing concern for one’s safety in the face of danger is deemed to be rational, and so he is sane and fit to fly. The book’s title, Catch-22, now common parlance, refers to “a problem for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem or by a rule.” Forced to serve under a commander who keeps raising the minimum amount of missions required before a bomber can be sent home, Yossarian is desperate to find a way to no longer have to fly more bombing runs. Unlike many war novels, Catch-22 doesn’t designate the opposing force as the threat to Yossarian’s life but instead reveals how the maddening rules of war, rank, and command of one’s own side can be just as dangerous as gunfire from the enemy.

No one has ever written a book like this.” NO MAJOR SPOILERSĬonsidered by many to be a modern classic, Catch-22 was first published in 1961 by Joseph Heller and serves as a satirical war novel that follows Captain John Yossarian, a bombardier in the United States Air Force stationed in Pianosa during the Second World War. “Blessedly, monstrously, bloatedly, cynically funny and fantastically unique.

Catch 22 by joseph heller