Yossarian’s vague guilt about abandoning his friends reveals
a weakness in his philosophy of self-preservation: he seems to have
no qualms about abandoning the mission and thereby keeping himself alive,
but he does care about his friends and feels a mild trepidation while
he awaits their return. Up to this point, Yossarian’s sole goal in
life has been survival at the expense of everything else: he has
subjected himself and his squadron to various illnesses, refused
to enjoy fruit because it might make him healthy, and endured rather unpleasant
hospital stays—all for the sake of not having to fly missions. Yossarian
faces a difficult dilemma: on one hand, caring for others is destructive
in that it undermines his ability to try to save his own life; on
the other hand, caring for others is the only thing that mitigates
the impersonal hatred that Yossarian perceives directed toward him.
The interlude with Luciana provides a welcome respite
from life in the camp on Pianosa, but it also illustrates the strain
placed on male-female relationships by the war. Luciana and Yossarian
seem legitimately drawn to one another, but their relationship is
brief and almost wholly sexual. Hungry Joe’s interruption of their
time together demonstrates the glaring lack of privacy in Yossarian’s
life and highlights the difficulty of having meaningful relationships
in wartime. Similarly, Yossarian’s tearing up of Luciana’s number
constitutes an act of irrational, self-satisfied exuberance that
seems part and parcel of the absurd ironies forced on him by the
Catch-22 mentality of the war. He is so overwhelmed
at the end of this section—after Bologna, after Luciana, and after
he learns that the number of missions has been raised yet again—that
he decides to check into the hospital, a place of relative sanity
and safety.
