Does Yossarian develop as a character throughout the text?
At the beginning of Catch-22, Yossarian is in the hospital, feigning illness to get out of combat duty. At the end of the book, he is back in the hospital, still wanting to avoid flying. It might seem as though Yossarian has made no progress and has ended up where he began. However, Yossarian has actually learned to take action in the face of his fear, leaving behind the system of rules, rather than trying to beat the system. Initially, Yossarian enters the hospital to wait out the end of the war, hoping to beat the Air Force by playing the system to his advantage. He has “made up his mind to spend the rest of the war in the hospital” (16). He is forced to censor letters written by the enlisted men, but he does not actually censor them for military content. Instead, he makes a game out of the requirement by crossing out certain parts of speech. This is similar to his attitude when he finally is driven from the hospital. Whenever he gets sent up on a mission, he does not try to hit the
