Week 3 - Yossarian keeps protesting, and the combat missions gets raised again

As we left off last week‘s blog post we had met a distressed combat airman named Yossarian. Yossarian had just left the hospital with a liver injury he did not really have, and was ready to go home after flying one more mission to reach the required number of 45, but it had now been changed to 50 missions and he has begun refusing the flying yet again. As we enter this week of reading though, the required number has been raised yet again to 60 combat missions (Fun fact incoming, Joseph Heller actually flew 60 air combat missions himself).

(Not Joseph Heller in that plane, but it‘s a cool picture and is relevant to the story) 

I am a little over halfways now in the book, and let me just say that I am still very intrigued in wanting to discover the story of this book, but I am even more confused though. A factor that plays into my perplexed view on this book is the way that it is written. The story is seen from a third person view with a switch of characters going faster than the Millennium Falcon, and while this may be confusing it also grants the reader an extremely wide view of the story. The reader gets to see every moment from every character‘s point of view. Every character except from the patient in white, because you know, he is kinda dead. The patient in white is not the only dead one though, as we have also discovered that Yossarian is sharing his tent with a dead man, a soldier who had reported for duty and only 4 hours later had died in a combat air mission. Yossarian keeps complaining to his superiors that he will not share his tent with a dead man, even though there really is no one there. My main focus this week won‘t be about the dead non existing man who is there but is still not there though, it is on the meaning of the famous catch 22. In this week‘s reading Yossarian goes to complain to his superiors on the subject of the 60 air combat missions needed, but as it turns out there is only 40 missions required per the official Army requirements. Yossarian says to his superior that he is then free to leave since he now has 50 plus missions flown, but there is a catch, precisely catch 22. According to the official requirements Yossarian is free to leave, but it is his squadron‘s boss that has ordered them to fly the 60 missions, and if Yossarian would leave after the 40 missions he would be refusing to comply with the orders from his boss which would be regarded as not acceptable. How will Yossarian cope with these requirements that aren‘t really official requirements but still are? Follow me again next week in my review of this weird, intriguing, confusing and amazing book. 

Yossarian in the movie Catch 22

Showing his reaction to the required number of missions.