It seems fitting that Yossarian's nickname in Catch-22 is "Yo-Yo." A yo-yo is a perfect metaphor for the recurring images of circularity and linearity that characterize the chaotic world of Joseph Heller's novel. On the one hand, a yo-yo follows the linear, straight path of its string, but on the other, a yo-yo goes up and down continuously and always finds its way back to the palm, exactly where it started. Yossarian's moral development in Catch-22 is one of the novel's many circularly linear (or linearly circular) themes, but unlike the rest, he ultimately breaks out of the hopeless circularity of Heller's world. Heller sets up a series of binary and corresponding moral dilemmas for Yossarian to face, and through parallel confrontation allows his protagonist to finally arrive at a moral awakening. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Many of Yossarian's experiences in Catch-22 occur in twos. Trying to convince the doctors that he is indeed crazy, Yossarian proclaims, "I see everything twice" (190). Yossarian indeed sees many things twice, and throughout the novel he arrives at similar moral impasses twice before making the "right" decision. Although the novel is not written in chronological order, it often returns to two cases from Yossarian's past: the bombings of the cities of Ferrara and Avignon. Yossarian receives a Distinguished Flying Cross and is promoted to Captain for flying over Ferrara (twice) and destroying a bridge, "because he was brave then" (146-149). Even though Kraft and his crew died after overshooting the objective twice, Yossarian isn't sure how he should feel: he entered the briefing room with mixed emotions, unsure of how he should feel about Kraft and the others, for they had all died in the distance of silent, secluded agony, at the moment when he found himself up to his ass in the same vile, excruciating dilemma of duty and damnation. (147)However, when Yossarian witnesses Snowden's death during the subsequent raid on Avignon, he decides that he wants nothing to do with the war. When Yossarian receives his Distinguished Flying Cross, he arrives at the rebel ceremony naked. Colonel Korn asks Captain Wren why Yossarian is naked, and Captain Wren replies, "A man was killed in his plane over Avignon last week and he was bleeding all over. He swears he'll never wear a uniform again" (228). Witnessing Snowden's death, Yossarian realizes that without life, without soul, "man was matter" and decides to live as long as possible (450). But it's not so easy to escape the circular world of Catch-22, and after this first parallel experience, Heller brings Yossarian back into combat with the raid on Bologna." At the time of the mission to Bologna, Yossarian was brave enough not to go around the target even once..." (150). Ironically, Yossarian is ordered to pass over Bologna not once, but twice. After faking a faulty intercom, Yossarian discovers that Bologna was a milk run, and when ordered through Bologna again, he makes the false assumption that there would be no problems. Instead, there is heavy fighting and many men from Yossarian's squadron are killed (156-161). In Catch-22, Heller denies the possibility of conjecture, because it is not possible to evaluate the logical probability of anything in a topsy-turvy world plagued by the illogical. Instead, it is when we have no expectations that we leave room for hope to grow. Of all the characters, Orr is the one Yossarian expects the least of. He's short and ugly and stupid and his planegets shot down in every mission. “Who could protect a warm-hearted, simple-minded gnome like Orr from rowdies and cliques and seasoned athletes like Appleby who had flies in their eyes and walked all over him with swaggering conceit and self-assurance at every turn? Chance they had.” (322)? When his plane is shot down for the last time in Bologna, Orr is presumed to have drowned at sea. Then, at the end of the novel, it is revealed that Orr has been found, miraculously, on a beach in Sweden Yossarian shouts: "After all there is hope! Don't you see? Even Clevinger might be alive somewhere in that cloud of his, hiding in until it is safe to come out” (459). Heller's point is not that we should have no expectations, but that in times of war and chaos, we must learn to expect the worst. Orr continually expects the worst on every mission - that his plane will be shot down - and survives every time. During Bologna, Yossarian expects a milk run and almost gets shot down, and Orr expects to get shot down and ends up in neutral Sweden. After Bologna, Yossarian realizes that life is of vital importance and that one must always be on the lookout for potentially lethal dangers. With these realizations, Yossarian becomes increasingly depressed because people are trying to kill him, and his growing sense of helplessness leads him to senselessly exercise power over others. At the beginning of the novel, Yossarian is in the hospital censoring the letters written by the enrolled patients, and he alters them for his amusement to all the modifiers, he declared one day, and from every letter that passed through his hands came every adverb and every adjective. The next day he made war on the articles. He reached a much higher level of creativity the following day when he erased everything in the letters except a, an, and the" (16). His contempt for other people's letters comes back to haunt him after his brief affair with Luciana. Yossarian falls in love with her and even asks her in marriage, but when she gives him her contact details he immediately tears them into pieces, symbolically tearing her to pieces (169-173 He didn't have to destroy either the letters or Luciana's address, but he has one). done simply because he could. Exercising power over the newspaper indirectly exerts power over the people who wrote in it and, being so indirectly despotic, Yossarian is no better than Milo, Colonel Cathcart and General Scheisskopf unlike them, however, Yossarian ultimately is he realizes "the enormity of his mistake in tearing her long, lithe, naked, vibrant young limbs into tiny pieces of paper so brazenly and so smugly throwing her into the gutter from the sidewalk" (173). Yossarian has a conscience, and through trial and error, Yossarian learns how to use it. Yossarian begins to understand that the blind exercise of power over others is immoral and that he himself is trapped in a world where his autonomy is subject to the whims of those more powerful. Yossarian's moral development is given a loose chronology through Heller's parallel dilemmas. Heller creates situations in which Yossarian faces two similar moral dilemmas: the first in which he makes the "wrong" decision and the second in which he makes the "right" decision. The chaplain describes this feeling of relapse well: "Deja vu. The subtle and recurring confusion between illusion and reality that was characteristic of paramnesia" (214). The chaplain sees Yossarian naked in a tree at Snowden's funeral, but not realizing it is Yossarian, assumes it was an apparition. Unable to understand whether it was deja vu, presque vu or jamais vu, he is completely perplexed (214). Although the chaplain doesn't realize it, Yossarian as a naked apparition is all three. Yossarian is, (463).