Catch-22 characters

Appears from the start

A US Army Air Forces bombardier stationed on a Mediterranean island during the Second World War, consumed by the conviction that everyone, enemy and ally alike, is trying to kill him. Desperate to survive and to stop flying combat missions, he fakes illnesses to stay in the hospital and schemes for any way out, only to run up against the impossible regulation known as Catch-22.

Appears from the start

The squadron's mess officer, a relentless entrepreneur who parlays his post into a sprawling black-market trading syndicate that he claims benefits everyone. Amoral and single-mindedly devoted to profit, he wheels and deals across the whole theater of war with cheerful disregard for its purpose.

Appears from the start

The insecure, ambitious group commander desperate to be made a general and to see his name in the newspapers. To impress his superiors, he repeatedly raises the number of missions his men must fly, trapping airmen like Yossarian who are counting the days until they can go home.

Appears from the start

The squadron's timid, well-meaning Anabaptist chaplain, lonely and unsure of his place amid the officers. Kindly and easily intimidated, he is troubled by the cruelty and absurdity around him and drawn to Yossarian's plight.

Appears from the start

The self-pitying flight surgeon who bemoans his own bad luck at being sent to war. He is the one who first explains the logic of Catch-22 to Yossarian, showing why a man cannot be grounded for insanity if he is sane enough to ask to be grounded.

Appears from the start

A young, wealthy, earnest airman in Yossarian's outfit, decent and idealistic. He is hopelessly in love with a prostitute in Rome who is largely indifferent to him, and he dreams of a normal life after the war.

Appears from the start

Yossarian's odd, tinkering tentmate, a small, grinning pilot who is forever repairing things and whose planes keep ditching in the sea. Cheerful and inscrutable, he seems always to be up to something no one else quite understands.

Appears from the start

A hapless officer saddled with an absurd name and promoted to squadron commander by a clerical accident. Painfully awkward and desperate to avoid everyone, he will only see people in his office when he is known to be out of it.

Appears from the start

A jittery, wild-eyed airman tormented by screaming nightmares whenever he is not scheduled to fly a mission. Frantic and unstable, he obsessively tries to photograph women and embodies the fraying nerves of men pushed past their limits.

Appears from the start

Colonel Cathcart's shrewd, cynical deputy, who does much of the real thinking behind the group's schemes. Sardonic and calculating, he manipulates his ambitious superior while looking after his own position.