Catch-22 Study Guide

Catch-22 begins in a World War II military hospital, where an American bombardier, Yossarian, feigns illness to escape combat duty. As an officer, he is expected to censor the outgoing letters of enlisted male patients. Yossarian instead arbitrarily strikes out select parts of speech, fraudulently signing his work as either "Washington Irving" or "Irving Washington," a simple subterfuge which proves adequate enough to foil the efforts of a C.I.D. investigator planted in the ward. Yossarian blacks out the entire content of one letter and writes at the bottom "I yearn for you tragically. R.O. Shipman, Chaplain, U.S. Army" (Heller, 8). (read more)