it until the penultimate chapter. The quality of these passages is dream-like, and Snowden's death is at the heart of Yossarian'srelationship to the war. In early chapters we learn that Yossarian takes the war very personally and insists that people are trying to kill him. This is an enduring featureof his world view. In the sequel, Closing Time, the narrator, reflecting on the events in Catch-22, recalls him as that crazy bombardier who used to say that 'hewould rather die than be killed... and had made up his mind to live forever, or at least die trying' (Heller, 1993. p. 20). He also takes personally God's creation ofpain, phlegm, tooth decay, and the incontinence of the old (p. 178). This brings to mind a similar passage in The Brothers Karamazov, in which Ivan gives this sortof mundane, gratuitous personal suffering as part of his reason for turning in his ticket to God. Indeed, this is one facet of 'the secret Snowden had spilled to him on the mission to Avignon - they were out to get him; and Snowden had spilled it all over the backof the plane' (pp. 170-71). In spite of his being wounded, Yossarian's most intimate experience of death is Snowden's demise on the way back from Avignon. Atfirst it is thought that Yossarian has been hit and people call though the intercom to help the bombardier. Yossarian asks many questions about the war, but they allboil down to one 'which had no answer': 'Where are the Snowdens of Yesteryear?' (pp. 34-5). Snowden keeps saying he is cold, and Yossarian does all he can tohelp by making him comfortable and putting a tourniquet on the shrapnel wound in his leg. In one of the most touching passages in the book we are with Yossarianwhen he finally discovers that there is another wound. 'Snowden was wounded inside his flak suit. Yossarian ripped opened the snaps of Snowden's flak suit andheard himself scream wildly as Snowden's insides slithered down to the floor in a soggy pile and just kept dripping o...
