Catch-22, set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off Italy, depicts the theme of a tenacious desire of Yossarian to escape his own pending death. By manipulating the war setting a

Charming Billy is a straightforward novel, which spans about thirty years in the mid twentieth century. As the novel begins at a funeral reception, death is an important subject from the very beginning. Unlike Catch-22, McDermott recounts her book using a straightforward tone as well as realistic characters and events. While no character thinks everyone is trying to kill him/her, death is an unavoidable subject that everyone affiliated with Billy has to come to terms with in his/her own way. "Billy had drunk himself to death. He had, at some point, ripped apart, plowed through, as alcoholics tend to do, the great, deep tightly woven fabric of affection that was some part of the emotional life, the life of love, of everyone in the room. Everyone loved him" (4). Even after his death people have only nice things to say about Billy. Holding drinks in one hand and recalling pleasant Billy memories is how the people at the funeral choose to deal with "charming" Billy's death. Each person who was close to Billy, however, knows deep down that Billy brought this death upon himself. For Billy is hardly ever charming; more correctly a drunken mess who is blind to all the love bestowed upon him. He is trapped forever wallowing in his sorrows from the past.

Confused thoughts of death permeate Yossarian's mind constantly, growing worse as his superiors keep raising the number of missions he is obliged to fly before he can go home. He jokes about the dead man in his tent without any humor at all. This man was killed before he was even able to sign into the squadron! Time is running out. However, the structure of these interwoven plots are scattered in no order. The style itself involves twists, turns, reversals, and surprises. Partial flashbacks offer tantalizing hints of events, and other echoes add details, until finally the picture becomes clear. In this confusing book full of insanity, irreverence, and joking that doesn't seem to be going anywhere, Yossarian's fear of death starts to make sense, as does the non-sequential construction of the book. The pieces are organized into a psychological progression from the humorous to the grim although there is no continuous story line. Similarly, Yossarian's ideas about death are confusing at the beginning, and the reader thinks he is insane for believing everyone wants to kill him, but by the end of the novel, one begins to understand how serious Yossarian's situation is- everyone really is trying to kill him; both inside and outside the squadron.

deal with it playfully by having Snark put soap in the men's food, or moving a bomb line to postpone a mission. Similarly, chapters are in a jumbled sequence analogous to his thoughts. By the end of the novel, however, things have changed drastically. Reality finally sets in. For missions can't be delayed forever and Yossarian has already been seriously wounded in the leg. Most of his friends are dead and even in his one land of refuge, a whore is trying to kill him. In the final three chapters of the book, time and sequence straighten out to the present, paralleling Yossarian's distinct decision to keep his pride and his life away from anyone at the squadron. His attention focuses on one

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Approximate Word count = 2152
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)