Yossarian's Mission In Catch 22

In the novel, Catch 22, a fictional story about a bombardier named John Yossarian is mentioned. Yosarrian is stationed in Pianosa in the beginning of the novel, but he is not being sent out into missions because he is continuously faking a liver problem. Along with him in the hospital are multiple other officers including Dunbar, Nately, McWatt and Doc Daneeka. Dunbar is special in the sense that he thinks he can prolongue his life by having a boring occupation so he barricades himself inside the hospital. McWatt is a pilot, Doc Daneeka is a surgeon and Nately falls in love with a prostitute. The story moves on to describe an experience of a mission in which Yossarian was to participate in. Yossarian is able to postpone their mission by simply

moving around the lines on their tactics map. After the postponing of their mission the story jumps into a flashback. In this part Yossarian is brought back to when he was still a new recruit and he was on a mission to bomb a bridge in Ferrara.

Yossarian is able to successfully complete the mission of blowing up the bridge and is awarded multiple medals for his excellence. However, in doing so his teammate Kraft is accidentally killed. This becomes an event of trauma that haunts Yossarian for a very long time. After this mission, the story moves onto their mission over Avignon which turns out to be the most traumatizing mission which Yossarian participates in. While on the mission, Yossarian's plane suffers heavy fire and his pilot is severely injured. The story then brings about the business planof a man named Milo Minderbinder. Milo seems to be usurping the squadrons funds to invest the money into items of the black market. His investments finally take a wrong turn when he decides to invest in Egyptian cotton which turns out to be a horrible investment. Finally, towards the end of the novel Nately reappears with a greater addiction towards his prostitute fiancee. He wants to keep going to see her and on one of his missions his plane is shot down and he is killed. Nately's prostitute blames Yossarian for the death of Nately and attempts to murder Yossarian multiple

times. She is unsuccessful each time, until in the end when she critically injures him. While at the hospital Yossarian finds out about the prostitute's lost younger sister and decides to try and rescue her.
In his novel, Heller uses factual information to relate the story of a bombardier and his experiences with battles. Overall, the novel does a great job in incorporating the facts from the wars of the twentieth century and relating them to the experiences of Yossarian. However there are some parts where the information is fictional and made up in order to make the story more engaging. I feel that the author does this effectively in order to maintain an equality between the fictional and the factual parts of the novel. He does not go on to create a complete fictional world with incorrect facts, but he would for example just create a city called Pianosa in order to create a more specific scene and event. However on the other hand a weakness in this novel was the order of chronology in which the story was mentioned. It was very confusing because the story would take unexpected changes from present time to a flashback of Yossarian's without any notice. This made the novel a little less engaging because most of the time the audience would have to spend time to figure out the time period of Yossarian's life the novel would be discussing at a certain point. The novel is very unique in how it portrays the life of Yossarian as a source to relate the facts about the wars around the twentieth century.