In his World War II novel, Catch-22, Joseph Heller satirizes a variety of bureaucrats and the military-industrial complex. In this story the protagonist is Captain Joseph Yossarian, a World War II bombardier, who is being stationed on the island of Pisona. He is an individualist who seeks to protect his own life and tries various means to extricate himself from further missions because he hates the war. Clevinger is a member of Yossarian's squadron who constantly argues with Yossarian that people must obey their institutions and fight the war. Colonel Cathcart attempts to become a general by volunteering his squadrons for the most dangerous missions possible and by constantly raising the number of missions that the men must fly to obtain leave. Lieutenant Nately is one of Yossarian's colleagues who comes from a wealthy family and proposes matrimony to a whore he meets during the war.
             Yossarian and every single other member of the squadron we are introduced to in the novel are crazy in their own way, but despite this they are unable to be grounded because of a military clause which lends the novel its title. Pilots, bombardiers and navigators can only gain removal from the war should they invoke catch 22, which states that people found to be insane cannot fly, but which also states that only crazy people would want to fly so if you ask to be relived from this duty then you must automatically be quite sane, and sane people fly.
             Since Yossarian cannot be removed from the war because of catch 22, he attempts to escape missions using several strategies. At the beginning of the book, Yossarian flees to the ward and discovers what a haven it is. He simply needs to feign having pain in his liver and censor letters of enlisted men. To prolong his stay there, he pretends to have a strange disease in which he sees everything twice. In combat, he takes evasive action during his flights to avoid being killed. One time ...