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Catch 22 By: Joseph Heller

Catch 22 Starts us off with a bit of a twist on what war is truely like. We meet a character named Yossarian that believes that War is going to be out to get him. He is an american soldier that often goes to the hospital to get out of his duties. The reader would generally think, "Why would he bother being in the military if he doesn't want to do his work?" but there is a twist to our story. Yossarian's commander, Milo Minderbinder, won't let any of the troops leave. No matter how hard they work or how long they have worked he won't let them leave. The standard case for Yossarian would be that he completes 40 missions and he will be let loose and be able to go home; Milo continues to up that number so that no one can go home ever. This is the part where the saying, "catch 22" comes into play. The rules of the military are that you must complete 40 missions and obey any command that your commanding officer gives you. Since Milo is telling everyone that they must complete more than those 40 missions he is breaking the rule but also substituing his own hence catch 22. Yossarian comes up with fake illnesses not only to get out of the work but also to allow time to become slower for him. According to Yossarian, if time is going slower due to boredom, he will actually "live" longer. He would rather sit in a hospitol and stare at people in full body castes just to make is crazy self feel like he is living longer. Others in the story believe that Yossarian is completely insane but they don't do anything about it because he is the most sane person in that military unit. Others have started to forge signatures to add some stress to the other commanding officers which leads an investigtion on the team, but the team is too busy with all of the newly assigned flight missions to notice anything major. The reader learns about a major mission known as Bologna. Yossarian goes out on a flight to bomb the city of Bologna but decides that his communications on the airplane have "stopped working" and so he lands in a safe area with his crew and the fly back to camp the next day. we see many times when things like this happen and continually see random excusses. Like in any other of the circomstances, Yossarian and his comrades get reprimanded and have to fly back not only once, twice to bomb the place. They get shot at and some of the men die but Yossarian manages to live on. Yossarian gets a free leave to Rome for a while and he takes up the opotunity to go out and party. Like any male who has been in the military, Yossarian looks for a woman. He meets a lady named Luciana who is beautiful and agrees to sleep with him. She becomes a big tease to Yossarian by constantly making him wait and being able to read his thoughts before he even knows he thought them. After they little "game of Scrabble" Luciana gives him her number but realizes that he will most likely tear it up and never look back which he does but regrets it later because he loves her. The split paths and never see one another again. Now later in the story we find even more twists. The reader starts to see the