Catch-22 Chapters 10 - 13

In these chapters, Heller focuses on the seeming inevitability of death during war. Although it seems obvious that with war comes death, I had not considered this perspective during my project yet. Because Heller focuses on the negatives of war throughout the his whole book so far, this topic is appropriate. In chapter 10, Yossarian reflects about a soldier named Mudd who was killed in action.Yossarian's tent still has his belongings and he believes that the tent is continually tarnished with the essence of death. This serve as a constant reminder to Yossarian that every time he steps onto a plane, he might never return.

Yossarian and the other soldiers under the command of Colonel Cathcart, have been volunteered by the commander for a very dangerous mission - the bombing of Bologna. Because of the importance of this mission, many sick men are not able to be grounded by the doctors and one of them expresses his cynical sentiment. The doctors sees the pointlessness of treating sick and injured men because after they are treated, they will be put back into active duty and will probably die anyways.

On the actual day of the mission, inclement weather delays the dangerous bombing runs and and the soldiers all hope that it doesn't stop raining, further strengthening the negative portrayal of war. Clearly none of the men want to be fighting the war. Yossarian, even goes as far as to poison the men's food to make them sick and unable to fly.

Many other texts that I have read about war, especially World War II, have glorified the concept of victory, often neglecting many of the atrocities that happened (not true of literature about World War I). However, Catch-22 so far has completely broken from that trend. Every member of the airmen camp have varying degrees of cynicism, ranging from slightly negative to people like Yossarian, who would even endanger the battle plans in order to be exempt from flying missions (he moved the line in the command post to behind enemy lines in order to trick the officers into believing that Bologna had already been captured).