In the very opening pages of the novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, we come upon a number of Air Force officers malingering in a hospital on an Italian island during World War II. One is censoring all the letters of enlisted men and forging the censor¡¯s name ¡°Washington Irving¡± just for fun. Another is having tedious conversations with a boring Texan in order to increase his life span by making time flow slowly, when another man is storing horse chestnuts in his cheeks so that he could obtain a look of innocence. Judging from their absurd behavior, it seems clear that inordinate number of the characters appearing in this book is mad. And as we read through the novel, we find out that most of these characters, soldiers and officers fighting in the war, seem indifferent to their own survival. However, we also encounter an American bombardier named Yossarian who is differentiated from his insane fellow officers since he is solely determined to stay alive. As the novel states ¡°That men would die was a matter of necessity; which men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance¡±, the book focuses on Yossarain¡¯s tremendous efforts to avoid being victimized by circumstance, a force represented as catch-22.
             According to Webster¡¯s college Dictionary, catch-22 means a frustrating situation in which one is trapped by contradictory regulations or conditions. In the novel Catch-22, Doc. Daneeka explains the word to Yossarain for the first time. He says, ¡°Catch-22 says you¡¯ve always got to do what your commanding officer tells you to¡± (p.67) when Yossarian complains about having too many number of missions. Yossarian protests that Twenty-Seventh Air Force Headquarters states that he can go home after forty missions, but Doc. Daneeka refutes, ¡°But they don¡¯t say you have to obey every order. That¡¯s the catch.¡&plusm...