Catch-22 Caught in the System The major theme of Catch-22 is the individual versus the system. Heller creates a setting in which the characters represent either an exploiter or an exploited person. The characters' struggle to maintain their individuality is a common thread that unites the novel. For the military system, soldiers are not people; it's just uniforms and numbers. Oddly enough, the “enemies” fight alongside each other. The capture itself is representative of what oppresses soldiers fighting to escape war. Capture serves as justification for any violation of human rights. The trap means what “they” (the system) want. The characters are persuaded to believe in the system rather than oppose it. As Yossarian discovers, Catch-22 didn't exist...but that made no difference. What mattered was that everyone thought so, and it was much worse, because there was no object or text to criticize, attack, amend, hate, insult, spit on, tear, trample or burn (419). . The only possible way to affect the system is to stop serving it, Yossarian discovers. As Vance Ramsey stated, “people respond to absurdity by renouncing their humanity, thereby becoming cogs in the machine” (178). Consistently, each chapter of Catch-22 depicts a scenario between the individual and the system. According to one reviewer, “Each chapter presents a single character a little closer to madness or death, or both” (Frank 81). Walsh elaborates: "In the world of Catch-22, it's too easy to become the Man in White [a reference to an injured man in hospital], a mass of bandages with a hole for a mouth, a tube for --- - a name and a military rank" (203). The individual versus the system and the loss of individuality are recurring themes in Heller's Catch-22. The reappearance of these ideas is an important thread that ties this novel together..