Death And Symbolism In Joseph Heller's Catch-22

Joseph Heller, born on May 1, 1923 has become one of the most renowned anti-war writers in American literature. From an early age he enjoyed writing, sending in a story he wrote about the Russian invasion of Finland to the New York Daily News, which rejected it. Heller graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1941, and a year later did what most other boys his age were doing, joining the army, in his case the air force, to fight in World War II. In 1944, Heller was sent to the Italian front where he flew 60 missions. Heller originally thought that the war was “fun in the beginning ... You got the feeling that there was something glorious about it.” Of course this would later change, as he later looked at the war with disgust, which was

The aptly named “soldier in white” was a soldier who had been so badly injured that he “was encased from head to toe in plaster and gauze,” (Catch-22, pg 4) with only a mouth hole that had been filled with a plastic tube for liquids. The men wondered if the man could possibly even be dead already, or if there was actually anyone in the plaster. To the other soldiers he was nothing more than just a “stuffed and sterilized mummy,” (Catch-22, pg 128) it didn't matter if he was dead or alive, he was just kind of there. Yossarian, the protagonist, tells the reader that “if [the nurse] had not read the thermometer and reported what she had found, the soldier in white might still be lying there alive exactly as he had been lying there all along.” (Catch-22, pg 127) After the first soldier in white dies and is taken out of the hospital, another one takes his place shortly after. Many of the soldiers just assume it's the same person, as they know nothing of what he looks like besides the whiteness of his plaster. Heller uses the soldier in white to show the reader how expendable and disposable the government thought the soldiers were. His lack of identity showed how most soldiers were treated by the government, nothing more than bodies to help win the fight. The dehumanization of the soldiers was just one way Heller shows how the war changed the values of

While all different times and places, these themes all connect to form the his argument.
Heller continues to add more symbols in each story in order to further get across his point on the state of America. Some symbols add onto others, such as the bus stop being part of New York in Closing Time, while others are completely different, like the aerial photographs in Catch-22. While this may be the case, the symbols continue to add onto Heller’s big picture.
In Catch-22 the pilots go on many missions, including some missions that were done just for the PR. The pilots learn that for a many missions their primary objective, rather than being to take out a bridge, or kill some of the enemy soldiers, was actually to clear landscapes, or make cool looking explosions for pictures. The general in charge even had a preference that “it makes a much nicer aerial photograph when the bombs explode close together.” (Catch-22, pg 147) This of course violated the soldiers safety, as flying missions were dangerous, even without the enemy planes in the sky. Heller uses these photos as another symbol of how the government was dehumanizing the war. They didn’t care about putting their soldiers lives at risk, as they just wanted nice looking photos that they “[wouldn’t] be ashamed to send through channels.” (Catch-22, pg