Conformism And Conformity In Catch-22 By Joseph Heller

Catch-22 Essay In Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, many of the character are conformists or conform to something one way or another. Major Major tries to act like the other men but still ends up being hated by everyone for no real reason besides being a major. Yossarian was in Pianosa and was just dealing with strangers shooting at him. He followed orders. However, he questioned why they had to do the things they were doing in the first place, why he had to kill people he didn’t know before they killed him first. At first, it did not bother him that he was killing people, but he was afraid of death. His fear of his own mortality caused him to question the order of his commanding officers and question his friends who actually enjoyed being in the war,

He openly questions the war and the governments handling of if it. Yossarian was upset because ¨strangers he didn´t know shot at him with cannons everytime he flew up into the air to drop bombs on them.¨ (Heller 17). Yossarian followed orders for a long time until he began to realize that fighting strangers he didn´t know for reasons no one would tell him about. He felt like he was going in an endless circle, so he tried to rebel, but in the begining of his transformation, Yossarian was still conforming to the government. He did what the Generals and the Colonels told him too with only mild complaining. He did what he told to for a good part of the time and he was a halfway decent bombadier. He did his missions, and when the number of required missions was raised, he continued to fly more missions. The book´s anti-war message was made apparent through the eyes of Yossarian, who was once a previously decent soldier turned desserter. While he conformed outwardly, Yossarian rebeled internally and decided he had grown tired of the war and planned to join Orr in Sweden. He was a conformist through the begining of his time in the