The Repetition Of Snowden's Death In Catch-22

Whether a character has a spirit is ultimately what determines their fate. Repetition is a common theme in Catch-22- specifically the repetition of Snowden’s death, showing more and more of the scene as Yossarian gains more and more spirit to get out of the war and make things right. Each of these progressing scenes parallels the main story by showing how more and more good people die, causing other characters to lose hope- lose their spirit to fight for their lives. As the book progresses and more descriptions of Snowden’s death is shown, most men give up and die- like McWatt committing suicide by flying into a cliff. While these men lose the last of their hope, Yossarian only gains more. Heller uses the repetition of Snowden’s death scene

The spirit is gone, man is garbage” (440). Snowden passed his secret on to Yossarian as he was trying not to see the life drain from Snowden. Each soldier belongs to the U.S. government- numbers, not people, matter. Yossarian was in the hospital when he told the nurse he doesn’t want to cooperate, and it’s his leg so he can refuse treatment if he wants, to which the nurse tells him, “It certainly is not your leg!... That leg belongs to the U.S. government. It’s no different than a gear or a bedpan” (291). This sentence and Snowden’s secret together is what changed Yossarian’s mindset- Yossarian stopped playing games. He stopped messing with letters pretending to be someone else, stopped pretending to be someone else to get a better hospital room, he doesn’t pretend to be a dying soldier for the comfort of the family anymore, he’s done pretending like it’s okay to mix identities like it’s meaningless- because even though it may be meaningless to the Colonels, it’s not meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Each person has their own identity that cannot simply be traded with someone else in the blink of an eye. From this point forward, Yossarian decided he was done playing games, and his human spirit to make things right was formed. Snowden’s death had happened before the book even started, but we see this full scene right at the end, which is when Yossarian finally left the

No one has a name or a personality, no one is known for their own. This concept led to Snowden’s death. Right after Snowden was hit, Dobbs was the only one in the plane who was aware- he cried, “‘Help the bombardier, help the bombardier’ And Snowden lay dying in the back” (50). Yossarian kept telling Dobbs, “I’m the bombardier. I’m alright, I’m alright” (50), which wasted time to help Snowden. Even if it wouldn’t had made the outcome different, knowing who is on the plane could save someone’s life in the future. No one, not even people on the same plane, knew who each other was. Each soldier is so mixed with others that they can’t even get help when one is dying because no one knows who they are- no one cares to know. Each soldier is a gear- property of the U.S. government, not individual people with families and lives unless they can keep and use their spirit to rebel against the conformities so that their name stands out in the crowd of blur. This scene was towards the beginning of the book and was just a small snippet of the full scene, which parallels how Yossarian had not yet realized how unfair war was. At this point in the book, Yossarian was simply going with everyone else, following orders as he thought he should. For example, in chapter seven the men were back in training. Lieutenant Scheisskpf was in charge and he was not a good leader, to say the least. Clevinger was going to stand up for himself and everyone