War is not all glory and patriotism, as Joseph Heller illustrates in his satirical war novel Catch-22. Men go out to war, flying mission after mission for a cause they do not know. Men are trapped in tautological paradoxes governed by the oppression of their superiors. Catch-22 illustrates the abusive powers and corruption granted by war to a military-industrial complex, imprisoning soldiers into misery. Nonetheless, through the actions and worldviews of Yossarian and other characters, moral behavior ultimately shines through the layers of darkness.
While the Catch-22 and other paradoxes are, at their base, just absurd strings of words, they possess incredible power in the military bureaucracy. For example, all the pilots covet the prospect of being allowed to return home due to the dangers of war, but their sanity prevents them from discharge. However, as no insane man wants to be discharged, it is impossible to attempt to leave the military on the grounds of feigned insanity. Consequently, Yossarian sees no escape in any possible option; he would fly until death, regardless of his sanity. The paradox presented by Catch-22 has effectively caused an enormous death toll in the army, including many of Yossarian's friends. As the required missions continue to hike up, no pilot can ever fly all of them, even if he tries, leaving him consigned to his inevitable, gory fate. At the same time, it is perfectly normal for Milo to be exempt from flying because he runs a "business" that distributes wealth among the pilots while claiming overtones of equality and fair shares. As a result of his "necessary" economic venture, American bases and soldiers are bombed by the enemy. Paradoxically, a doctor, someone supposed to save people from death, is brought to the war, which directly causes his patients' deaths. Hearing that Yossarian wants to marry her, Luciana rejects him. She believes that since she is not a virgin, no man would want to marry her unless they were insane, and she does not want to marry an insane man, leaving Yossarian in a catch. Furthermore, he only begins to miss her after tearing up her address, making his love fruitless. The many wartime paradoxes have significantly detrimental effects on those subjugated by them.
However, that begs the question, how can a string of words inflict such harm on individuals? Surely someone can call out the absurdity in these paradoxes, but the military bureaucracy renders this impossible. The military-industrial complex is responsible for granting illogical paradoxes constructive power due to fundamental laws of human nature regarding authority. Since the dawn of time, might made right. The superior predator lives, while weaker beings go extinct. History is written by the victors who can justify their actions and twist the past to their liking. The weak are left powerless and forced to obey the laws of the strong. Tyranny by the powerful has persisted in society for ages; it is the single factor in why dictatorships and autocracies exist. This recurring element of human nature presents itself in the military bureaucracy; at the bottom are soldiers like Yossarian, who must blindly follow the will of higher-up generals and officers. Why must all able and sane men fly into danger? Why must people continue to die in a senseless war already won? Self-serving people like Cathcart decide these rules, and their subordinates are forced to pay at the cost of their lives. Moreover, since the military bureaucracy grants these corrupt officers power, the absurd paradoxes will be here to stay. For example, Yossarian cannot speak against Colonel Cathcart, his superior, for ludicrously raising the number of necessary flights. The cases of the military's treatment of Daneeka and Milo illustrate the sheer absurdities and atrocities allowed to happen due to the oppression of higher powers. Despite standing on the ground alive, Daneeka is still classified as dead following the accident, as admitting his survival would be inconvenient and humiliating to the army. The premises of Catch-22 only exist due to the unchallengeable power of influential superiors who are justified in their actions by their statuses.
As a result of these paradoxes, morals in the army seem to crumble away. Throughout Catch-22, there are seldom any acts of altruism or goodwill; instead, everyone seems confined to self-preservation. Obsessed with the belief that everyone around him was trying to kill him, Yossarian acted in self-interest for most of the novel. Initially, he is shown to be faking illness inside a hospital to escape his wartime duties, forging others' signatures to sow confusion, and directly disobeying his bombing orders. Unfortunately, the others around him are not much better; religious figures in the army are all, ironically, impious and immoral. Initially a moral and religious man, the chaplain soon lies about an illness to escape the horrors of war. His assistant, who is ironically atheist and singlemindedly devotes himself to his ambitions of replacing the chaplain via underhanded methods, is no different. The officers do not even bat an eye about sending men to dangerous missions with the primary purpose of an aesthetic photo, and Milo's presence is also blatantly immoral. However, Yossarian's journey has made him a witness to the damage wrought by terrible forces beyond his control. On the sidelines, he watched as his friends died or disappeared one by one. In the streets of Rome, he saw the senseless damage and destruction in the city and Aarfy escaping punishment for his rape and murder of an innocent woman. At last, Yossarian is no longer complacent in mindlessly following inhumane orders like bombing entire villages to photograph the ruins. However, now a problematic threat to his superiors, Yossrian is tempted with promotion and honorable discharge in exchange for choosing to ignore the immorality of his officers and the military bureaucracy and obsequiously praise his superiors. However, at this crucial moment, Yossarian chooses his morality over temporal security and turns down the offer, valuing the lives of his misfortune comrades over the self-preservation of his own life. Despite all the absurdities and horrors of the immorality-riddled military-industrial complex of Catch-22, Yossarian illustrates how even in these ludicrous circumstances, it is possible to be, in simplest terms, human.
Catch-22 is characterized by its paradoxes enforced by the military-industrial complex, an oppressive force that prioritizes the self-serving ambitions of its officers over the lives and well-being of its soldiers. At the novel's conclusion, Yossarian acts in moral rebellion against the absurdity and depravity of war, choosing to reject an offer that would reward him at the cost of his comrades continuing to suffer in war. By leaving the conflict entirely, Yossarian and Heller reject the nature of conflict, which inevitably allows the powerful to subjugate the powerless through their unchallengeable might.
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