Amongst all the intriguing paradoxes existing in this world, the Catch-22 paradox still stands out as one with profound implications. The novel Catch-22 was written by Joseph Heller in 1953, right around three years into the Korean War. The novel describes a paradox in which, in order for one to solve a problem, the only solution is something inherent to the circumstance itself.

Take the process of looking for a job as an example. Hypothetically, internship is nonexistent, and all job applications require some form of previous work experience in the corresponding field. However, the dilemma is that for someone who is searching for a job for the first time, there is nowhere for that person to gain any work experience. To salvage a sunken ship, one will need the equipment in that ship. For the soldiers to shake off the shackles of military duty and get home, they would need to go to war first.

In Heller’s novel, a soldier named Yossarian was stationed with his Air Force squadron on the island of Pianosa near the Italian coast during WWII. The story unfolded in a hospital crowded with people, mostly Yossarian’s fellow soldiers in the same squadron. However, many of them are not actually injured or sick; most soldiers are here because they are unwilling to go to the battlefield. Aside from death, the only other reason one can use for being excluded from going on missions is mental illness. As long as one is identified as mentally incapable of flying missions, he or she will be arranged at the hospital until recovery.

One might wonder, why do all these soldiers seem to resist going to the battlefields so much? Is it not an honorable act of valor to be dispatched to the frontlines and dedicate everything to one’s country? In addition to that, if one manages to come back alive, what welcomes him or her will be the praise of citizens, his own country, and family; which part of that is not tempting? However, here lies the problem. Usually, when a soldier had flown a certain number of missions and came back alive, they would be exempted from this heavy duty, but Yossarian’s superiors, namely Colonel Cathcart and General Dreedle, did the exact opposite. Each time a soldier accomplished the number of missions required and came back alive from the battlefields, the commanders would demand more missions instead of exempting them from their duty. The only way to shake this burden off their shoulders is to reach the number of missions required, but the inherent problem of the commanders continuously raising the number lies in the way. In many instances, the soldiers do not even know what they are fighting for. They are thrown into the battlefields brutally day after day, facing the possibility of fatal injuries for something they do not even understand, something even their superiors do not understand. The entire army is thrown into this absurd war demanded by the country, which might not even have any meaning. In fact, what Heller is attempting to mock here is of war itself. Through this dilemma the soldiers are facing, he is metaphorically shedding light upon the truth of struggles between nations. War is like this paradox; once initiated for whatever reason, one needs to continuously fight its rival before the countries on both ends can free themselves from this meaningless struggle. Although fighting the war till its end seems to be the obvious inherent solution to the problem of war itself, at the end of the novel, Heller suggests an alternative to this seemingly definite paradox.

At the end of the novel, Yossarian successfully escaped during one of his missions. Although he landed on some random island out in the middle of nowhere, he did manage to escape the predicament and torture of the military. Through Yossarian’s successful attempt at escaping the military, Heller wants to suggest that there are methods other than warfare to resolve conflicts between nations. Though not fully clear what those methods are, just like how Yossarian does not know where he is after landing, people will one day figure them out.