It seems appropriate that Yossarian's nickname in Catch-22 is "Yo-Yo." A yo-yo is a perfect metaphor for the recurring images of circularity and linearity that characterize the chaotic world of Joseph Heller's novel. On one side, a yo-yo follows the straight, linear path of its string, but on the other, a yo-yo continually moves up and down and always finds its way back to the palm, exactly where it started. Yossarian's moral development in Catch-22 is one of the novel's many circularly linear (or linearly circular) themes, but unlike the others, it ultimately succeeds in breaking out of the hopeless circularity of Heller's world. Heller sets up a series of binary and corresponding moral dilemmas for Yossarian to face and, through a parallel simile, allows his protagonist to finally achieve a moral awakening. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Many of Yossarian's experiments in Catch-22 take place in pairs. Trying to convince the doctors that he is indeed crazy, Yossarian proclaims, “I see everything twice” (190). Yossarian does indeed see many things twice, and throughout the novel twice finds himself in similar moral impasses before making the “right” decision. Although the novel is not written chronologically, it often returns to two episodes from Yossarian's past: the bombings of the cities of Ferrara and Avignon. Yossarian receives a Distinguished Flying Cross and is promoted to captain for flying over Ferrara (twice) and destroying a bridge, "because he was brave at the time" (146-149). Even though Kraft and his crew died after overshooting the target twice, Yossarian isn't sure how he should feel: he entered the briefing room with mixed emotions, not knowing what he was supposed to feel about Kraft and the others, for they were all dead far away, in silent, isolated agony, at a time when he was up to his ass in the same ignoble, agonizing dilemma of duty and damnation. (147) However, when Yossarian witnesses Snowden's death during the following raid on Avignon, he decides that he wants nothing to do with the war. When Yossarian receives his Distinguished Flying Cross, he arrives at the ceremony naked and rebellious. Colonel Korn asks Captain Wren why Yossarian is naked, and Captain Wren replies, "A man was killed in his plane over Avignon last week and he was bleeding everywhere." He swears he will never wear a uniform again” (228). Witnessing Snowden's death, Yossarian realizes that without life, without soul, "man was matter" and decides to live as long as he can (450). But it's not so easy to escape the circular world of Catch-22, and after this first parallel experience, Heller throws Yossarian back into the fight with the raid on Bologna. "At the time of the Bologna mission, Yossarian was brave enough not to go around the target even once..." (150). Ironically, Yossarian is ordered to visit Bologna not once, but twice. After faking a faulty intercom, Yossarian discovers that Bologna had been a milk leak, and when ordered to go back through Bologna, he wrongly assumes that there would be no flak. On the contrary, the fighting was violent and many men from Yossarian's squadron were killed (156-161). In Catch-22, Heller denies the possibility of conjecture, because one cannot assess the logical probability of anything in a world that is upside down and rife with illogic. Instead, it is when we have nowaiting as we make room for hope to grow. Of all the characters, Orr is the one Yossarian expects the least from. He's small, ugly, and stupid, and his plane gets shot down on every mission. "Who would protect a warm, simple-minded gnome like Orr from thugs and cliques and expert athletes like Appleby who had flies in their eyes and who would walk straight at him with swaggering vanity and self-assurance every time." had a chance" (322)? When his plane is shot down for the last time in Bologna, Orr is presumed to have drowned at sea. Then, at the end of the novel, it is revealed that Orr has been found, miraculously , on a beach in Sweden, Yossarian exclaims: “There is hope after all Don’t you see even Clevinger could be alive somewhere in his cloud, hiding inside until? that it may be safe to come out of it” (459) Heller’s point is not that we should have no expectations at all, but that in times of war and chaos we should. learns to expect the worst on every mission - that his plane will be shot down - and he survives every time During Bologna, Yossarian expects a milk rush and is almost shot down, and Orr expects to be shot down. . and ends up in neutral Sweden. After Bologna, Yossarian realizes that life is of vital importance and that one must always be on the lookout for mortal dangers. With these realizations, Yossarian becomes more and more depressed at the thought of people trying to kill him. , and his growing sense of powerlessness leads him to recklessly exercise his power over others. At the beginning of the novel, Yossarian is at the hospital censoring letters written by enlisted patients, and he alters them for his own amusement in "Death". to all modifiers, he declared one day, and from each letter that passed through his hands came each adverb and each adjective. The next day, he waged war on the articles. He reached a much higher level of creativity the next day when he blacked out everything in the letters except a, an, and the" (16). His disdain for other people's letters comes back to haunt him after his brief affair with Luciana Yossarian falls in love with her and even asks for her hand in marriage, but when she gives him her details, he instantly tears them into pieces, symbolically tearing her into pieces (169-173). had to destroy the letters or those of Luciana but he did it simply because he could. Exercising power over the diary indirectly exercises power over the people who wrote in it, and, by being so indirectly despotic, Yossarian is no better than Milo, Colonel Cathcart, and General Scheisskopf However, Yossarian ultimately realizes "the enormity of his mistake in tearing his long, supple, bare, vibrant limbs into tiny pieces of paper with such brazenness and by throwing her so smugly into the gutter from the sidewalk” (173). Yossarian has a conscience, and through trial and error, Yossarian learns to use it. Yossarian begins to understand that the blind exercise of power over others is immoral and that he himself is trapped in a world where his autonomy is subject to the whims of the most powerful. Yossarian's moral development is given a vague timeline through Heller's parallel dilemmas. Heller depicts situations in which Yossarian is confronted with similar moral dilemmas twice: the first in which he makes the "wrong" decision and the second in which he makes the "right" decision. The chaplain aptly describes this feeling of recurrence: “Deja vu. The subtle and recurring confusion between illusion and reality that characterizes paramnesia” (214). The chaplain sees Yossarian naked in a tree at Snowden's funeral, but doesn't (463).