In Joseph Heller’s, Catch 22, mortality and the inevitability of death are themes that linger over every soldier’s shoulders. This constant fear leads the men in the Army to seek life, or what they believe makes them feel “alive” in order to feel human. Yossarian, the main character, is constantly searching for women to break his heart in order for him to feel emotional. The severity of war and the knowledge that in every mission flown might be the last, leads soldiers to do things, which they would have never done before. Yossarian, the main character believes that everyone was, “out to get him” (12). In order for Yossarian to feel alive and ignore the constant thoughts of death and how fragile he is, he turns toward women. “She would have been perfect for Yossarian, a debauched, coarse, vulgar, amoral, appetizing slattern whom he had longed for and idolized for months” (16). By purposefully using unpleasant adjectives to describe Yossarian’s ideal woman, Heller shows the audience that regardless of what kind of woman she was, she brought Yossarian emotion. During the course of war, soldiers often become dull or dense. Any feeling that Yossarian feels toward to woman goes against what he deals with in his everyday life, and that is why she is so stimulating. Yossarian has no need for a gorgeous, slender, model-like woman in his life. All he needs is someone to allow him to feel anything else rather than the constant pangs of what war brings and forces upon a victim. Snowden, another important character, and close friend of Yossarian, reveals a secret that changes how Yossarian thinks about life. In the last moments of his life when Yossarian is comforting the almost dead soldier he realizes the secret to be, “Man was matterThe spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden’s secret. Ripeness was all”(339). Man was matter. That was all the mattered. In death the spirit is taken away and the body is left, which