Quote 3

"Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden’s secret. Drop him out a window and he’ll fall. Set fire to him and he’ll burn. Bury him and he’ll rot, like other kinds of garbage. That was Snowden’s secret. Ripeness was all."

As Snowden dies, Yossarian realizes that every person is just matter. Everyone is made of the same material and without ideas and personality, we are all garbage. Yossarian realized that one only has a very limited window to be, and in that time, you must make your mark during that time to truly be an individual. 

Quote 2

"One of the things [Yossarian] wanted to start screaming about was the surgeon’s knife that was almost certain to be waiting for him and everyone else who lived long enough to die. He wondered often how he would ever recognize the first chill, flush, twinge, ache, belch, sneeze, stain, lethargy, vocal slip, loss of balance or lapse of memory that would signal the inevitable beginning of the inevitable end."

Yossarian, although confronted with the horrors of war on a daily basis, has not become any more immune to common fears. Interestingly, they seem to have made him more aware of the delicacy and brittleness of life itself. Catch-22 is in one way an inescapable trap that keeps him in the army, but Yossarian realizes that even if manages to escape, he is still in the inescapable trap of death. 

Quote 1

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he would have to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. “That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed. 'It’s the best there is,' Doc Daneeka agreed."

Obviously, the first mention of the Catch-22 Law is one of the most significant events in the book. Throughout the book, Catch-22 is used against many different aspects of life during the war. This first usage, however, directly involves Yossarian. Later, we learn that Catch-22 does not exist, and yet is used by many people to convince and argue. For a nonexistent rule, it is very persuasive. The novel shows that unreal words often cause real harm to real men and women.