Catch-22 Catch-22 The main theme of Catch-22 is the individual versus the system. Heller creates a setting in which the characters represent the exploiter or the exploited. The characters' struggle to maintain their individuality is a thread that holds the novel together. For the military system, soldiers are not people; they're just uniforms and numbers. Strangely, the "enemies" find themselves fighting alongside each other. The capture itself is representative of what oppresses the soldiers struggling to escape the war. Capture is used as justification for every violation of human rights. The trick means whatever "they" (the system) want. The characters are persuaded to believe in the system rather than oppose it. As Yossarian discovers, Catch-22 didn't exist... but it made no difference. What mattered is that everyone thought that was the case, and that was much worse, because there was no object or text to criticize, attack, modify, hate, insult, spit on, tear to shreds, trample on, or burn (419). . The only possible way to influence the system is to stop serving it, Yossarian discovers. As Vance Ramsey states, “people react to meaninglessness by giving up their humanity, becoming cogs in a machine” (178). On a consistent basis, each chapter of Catch-22 describes an individual versus the system scenario. According to one critic, "Each chapter brings a single character one step closer to madness or death or both" (Frank 81). Walsh clarifies: "In the world of Catch-22, it's all too easy to become the man in white [a reference to an injured man hospitalized], a mass of bandages with a hole for a mouth, a tube for --- – a military name and rank” (203). The individual versus the system and the loss of individuality are recurring themes in Heller's Catch-22. The repetition of these ideas is an important thread that ties this novel together.