One major theme that comes up in both of these books is the theme of no free will. In Slaughterhouse 5 Vonnegut proclaims through the narrator that there is no such thing as free will and that all things in life are predestined. That no matter what we chose to do we really aren't choosing to do it at all and that the choice was already made. In Catch 22 the theme is the same just brought to our attention in a different way. Catch 22 is a paradox, leaving no way of escaping from a dilemma. No matter what we do o

Slaughterhouse 5 and Catch 22 are two books that were written to show the ridiculousness of war. They were written to share with everybody that sometimes it isn't the soldier who kills the most enemy or the pilot who bombs the most targets that are the heroes of the war but it is those people that stand up and proclaim the utter stupidity of war. The heroes are those who stand up for what they believe is right even if that means disobeying an order. These books were written most of all to share with us that war is wrong and is a waste of valuable lives. They convinced us that all free will and sanity is lost in war and that it can destroy men not just physically but also mentally. I think Heller put it best when he described what Yossarian was going through when his friend was dying in his arms,

"Yossarian was cold, 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 entails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he will fall. Set fire to him and he will burn. Bury him and he will rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage (Heller 430)."

A theme that is a little more hidden in each of these books is what war does to people. In Catch 22 Yossarian is hysterical when he yells at McWatt to take evasive action from German anti-aircraft flak. When Mcwatt doesn't do what Yossarian tells him Yossarian grabs him by the throat and starts to choke him. This is his friend, his comrade that he actually thinks about killing but doesn't because he is the pilot of the plane. The stress that these men go through is not just physical but also very mental. They know that the very next mission they fly could very well be their last and this makes them always depressed and bitter. Yossarian once makes a comment about the new pilots that have just arrived saying, "And it's not there fault that they were courageous, confident and carefree. He would just have to be patient with them until one of them was killed and the rest wounded, and then they would all turn out okay

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Approximate Word count = 1477
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)