Catch-22

Bombardier Yossarian is stationed in Italy during World War II, but the danger he fears most comes from the army that keeps raising the number of missions required before airmen can go home. Joseph Heller's Catch-22 follows his increasingly desperate attempts to survive an institution whose rules turn every reasonable objection against him. The central regulation appears to offer an escape: a man willing to fly deadly missions must be insane, yet asking to be removed proves that he values his life and is therefore sane enough to continue flying. Yossarian's logic is sound, but the bureaucracy is designed so that sound logic cannot free him.

Around this contradiction, military authority, ambition and administrative language become engines of absurdity. Comic exchanges expose decisions with lethal consequences, and Yossarian's refusal to treat death as an abstract duty makes him seem disloyal to those protected by rank and procedure. Heller moves between farce and dread without separating them, showing how institutions can normalize what individuals recognize as madness. The novel's circular rule has become a lasting name for any trap whose conditions cancel every route of escape.