In Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 he uses literary elements, namely repetition of ideas and themes, to portray his personal views of the military through the novel's characters, and to show the catch-22's within the military itself. A catch-22 is a situation in which a desired outcome, or solution, is impossible to attain because of a set of inherently unreasonable rules or conditions.
             Heller uses lots of repetition in Catch-22 to make the reader question the sanity of the characters and to show how he believes that war drives people insane. Through out the novel he repeatedly tells the reader that the characters are crazy.
             "McWatt was crazy. He was a pilot and flew his plane as low as he dared over Yossarian's tent as often as he could, just to see how much he could frighten him...Sharcare. He was crazy too" (P. 27).
             By making all of the characters crazy, the reader has to think more about whom they trust in the novel and whom they believe. Even though Yossarian, the main character, isn't narrating the story, the story is told through his viewpoint. Yossarian isn't very sane himself, which makes the reader question whether or not they should even trust Yossarian's interpretations of the other character's sanity. The fact that the story is told through Yossarian's perspective, and that he keeps stressing how crazy everyone is makes the reader doubt him more. Why does he keep telling the reader everyone is crazy, is he trying to divert their attention from him? Is there something he's trying to hide?
             The military in the story repeatedly raises the number of missions the soldiers have to complete in order to return home. "Colonel Cathcart was so upset by the deaths of Kid Sampson and McWatt that he raised the missions to sixty-five" (P.350). The characters are going crazy because they are being consistently set up and let down. This quote also shows how Heller is trying to portray Colonel Cathcart as crazy too. Ra...