Talk:Yossarian

Yossarian is a Bombardier

If I recall correctly, isn't Yossarian a bomber pilot (the one who flies the bomber) and not the bombadier (who actually aims and drops the bombs)? --Raul654 22:29, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I don't think so...he's always in the back of the plane doing something, as far as I remember. He's definitely never flying though. Adam Bishop 22:32, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

He's definetly the bombardier, Heller mentions he is the lead bombardier and the pilot he flies with is McWatt.

You might have gotten confused because he says a few times that hes in the nose of the plane which is the area below the pilots in a little glass dome area. Google B-25 to know what i mean, he was definitely bombardier.

Anti-hero?

Yossarian didn't strike me as an anti-hero. He seems to be the only unflawed character in the novel. PoptartKing 00:29, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes but in a classical sense he is not a hero - he is proud that he is a coward and does not want to risk his life for his country. Hence he is an anti-hero, even if we love him for it. --Lethaniol 11:21, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that Yossarian is an anti-hero in a sense; A hero in war novels is traditionally more like Havermayer; Always willing to go straight into the thick of battle, or maybe like Nately; with blind patriotism demonstrated in the argument with the old man in Rome. But while being an anti-hero, he is not a bad character, he is ac ting upon the basic human instinct- to survive, and while he seems crazy to the other characters, he seems to be one of the few sane ones, as he is only trying to lengthen his own life, while Havermayer with his disregard for his own life, Nately with his blind and unbreakable patriotism and Aarfys psychosis are the trul insane ones. Orr too is sane, as he is merely trying to survive by practising crash landings to perfection so he may one day escape Pianosa without accusations of desertion.-Chrislewisfulham 20:09, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

This movie portrayed Armenians in WWII as cowards or Shakespearian Falstaff characters. It was absolutely despicable. Monte Melkonian (talk) 05:08, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

That is irrelevant to this discussion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.218.169.100 (talk) 12:35, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

John???

I'm not sure one throwaway comment by Cathcart is enough to say for certain that Yossarian's first name is John.

There are multiple other references given from Closing Time. --Lethaniol 11:21, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

It absolutely is NOT "John". The first name is NEVER revealed, leading to the oft-used question of teachers to their Heller readers, "What is Yossarian's first name"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.248.159.226 (talk) 21:26, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Ending

"Cathcart backs down and offers to release him from duty as a reward for not telling anybody." Not only is this inaccurate, it completely misses the point of the agreement between Yossarian and the Generals at the end of the book. They ask Yossarian to "like" them.

so change it 68.39.127.114 15:38, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

This summary is wrong in many places, and needs someone who's actually read the book to go through it and sort everything out properly. 19/11/05

Yossarian earns Cathcart's ire for a smuggling scam that was actually perpetrated by Milo and is threatened with imprisonment.

I thought they were going to stick him for desertion - there was no mention of smuggling in my copy of the book, though it does mention Milo tried to smuggle something in Italy, which he told the police commissioner in Rome.

That is correct that is not in the book (maybe it is from the film). In fact that whole last paragraph is completely wrong will sort it tomorrowLethaniol 23:54, 30 October 2006 (UTC) if someone does not do it before. Cheers

Multiple character pages

Is it just me, or would it make more sense to have all of a novel's chracters on one page, as opposed to twenty different sites for all of them? 11/27/05

See discussion on main Catch-22 article please --Lethaniol 11:21, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that Talk:Catch-22 and perhaps Talk:List of Catch-22 characters are better places for discussing one-page-per-character vs all-characters-on-one-page. --DavidCary (talk) 14:45, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

MASH

Personally, I see a huge similarity between him and Alan Alda's character, Hawkeye Pierce from MASH 1/31/06

clinger from MASH is based off yosarian. and also i dont get how this "Ironically, he is described as preferring to die naturally than being killed in combat. It is a particular species of death that Yossarian apparently dreads "is ironic.

do you know what irony means? 22/5/06

TIDY UP

Right I have sorted the ending as it was so obviously wrong. There is no mention of smuggling in the the last 3 chapters!!! This article does need a lot of work on it though. I will likely come along and implement the Wikiproject Novels character template soon - I had not realised before how poor this article was - I was trying to sort out the smaller ones first! Anyway please feel free to flesh out as much as possible the story of Yossarian in Catch-22. I have not read Closing Time yet - so could someone else start writing up what he gets up to in that book.

P.S. Have sorted this discussion out so much easier to navigate. CheersLethaniol 11:21, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Have implemented Wikiproject Novel character template, as this article was a mess, and started to add detail. A lot more detail is required in particular:

• All the section stubs need to be expanded.
• There is no information on Closing Time as yet - which would be welcome.

Hopefully this new format will help focus contributions to this article Cheers --Lethaniol 15:41, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject Classification

Not yet classified, could I suggest to the assessor that it be marked as START (as clearly it is devoid of a lot of useful information and necessary), and as HIGH importance. I believe it should be rated as HIGH as the novel Catch-22 is likely to be promoted to TOP, and as the main protagonist and with a cult anti-hero following, especially at the time of the Vietnam War, and to a lesser extent now. Anyway that's my opinion. - Added by User:Kevinalewis

Agree have changed to High. Cheers Lethaniol 22:52, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Major themes?

This section is rather strange. Why is there such an add of the book in the main characters article? I will delete as such, as it has no real value into the whole piece. --Soetermans 22:44, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I have reverted your good faith edit. Both of these sections are very important (especially the theme section) but currently well underdeveloped. Hence why they have the {{sectionstub}} template there - to encourage people to expand. Lethaniol 22:50, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Eh, could you stop deleting sections just because nobody's really touched them yet, Soetermans? I mean, they're going to get done... eventually, once all the... you know. Sometime. Apparently we're trying to follow the Novel Project template, so if you have a beef with empty/arbitrarily-placed sections, take it up with them. (No one listens) Or at least mention it here, otherwise you'll just get reverterised.Artiste-extraordinaire 23:49, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

You make it sound like I delete all empty sections, extraordinaire. Anyway, my apologies for deleting the themes section. So why is the theme section very important? Aren't the book's themes listed on its own article? And isn't this one just about the fictional character Yossarian? --Soetermans 08:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. My bad. I probably meant you'd got rid of the same section more than once before. Never mind. The reason for having the (admittedly sparse) Themes secton is that, especially in a novel as complex as Catch-22, different characters are used to explore different aspects of the novel's many themes. Appleby is used to comment on the validity of always following instructions (eg, the Great Atabrine Insurrection) and Havermeyer is used as an example of how excelling in whatever does not necessarily mean that a person is particularly well-balanced, mentally. (I obviously suck at thematic discussion, so I'll leave it to others.) Yossarian, as the protagonist, is used to explore in a way most of the themes (God, survival vs. duty, etc), as well as representing the author's conclusion (unless we're all Post-Structuralistas) which means that his Themes section will be similar to the main novel's one, although it will focus more heavily on his contribution to the literary discussion of the ideas Heller presents. Artiste-extraordinaire 02:55, 19 February 2007 (UTC) (Oh, and don't mess with my czeching. Poor form.)

I agree with Artiste - the themes are the most important part of Catch-22 but unfortunately also the most difficult to write. This is because we (as Wikipedians) can not write up from scratch the theme sections (see WP:OR]]) but need to get the info from reliable sources (see WP:RS) - which is going to take a lot of work - but needs to be done. Until then people can put basic information into the themes sections - but it will eventually need backing up with sources. Cheers Lethaniol

Understood! Too bad my understanding of literature doesn't suffice to help this article, but I'm glad to know what the goal is here. And sorry for correcting your "cheching", Artiste. --Soetermans 08:40, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Yossarian Lives

I was checking out the Italian version of this page, and it made me remember this little catchcry that I've seen pop up from time to time. Apparently a full-page ad was taken out in the NY Times as promotion for the book prior to its release, and all it said was YOSSARIAN LIVES. And although it's been a while and I was never really fussed about it, I seem to recall it being somewhere in Closing Time. Anyone have any solid basis for either of those, and want to chuck it in somewhere?Artiste-extraordinaire 23:49, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Yep this is correct, I think it mentioned in the preface of my copy of Catch-22 - will also go check the NY times website Cheers Lethaniol 23:54, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

A related aside. I do not know if this is mentioned in the above sources, but shortly after the novel came out, a friend of mine and fellow graduate student, who was himself of Armenian ancestry—his father had emigrated to the US from Armenia—told me that in Armenian, 'yossar' means "still alive". I've verified this recently with another independent source, someone I came to know recently who is also of Armenian extraction. Since '-ian' is a typical ending for an Armenian surname, this makes sense in context. Furthermore, as Yossarian in Heller's novel is constantly avoiding being killed, it also makes sense as a name that means something (just as many names in Heller's novel mean something, e.g., Major Major, Colonel Scheisskopf, etc.). It is also consistent with the text "YOSSARIAN LIVES" of the ad mentioned above. So it may well be that Heller knew of this fact and used it in a subtle way in his novel. Bill Jefferys (talk) 21:28, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Timeline

There are two potential problems I see with the timeline. Three, even. The first is that for those curious souls who wish to hold Wikipedia accountable to its sources, it isn't possible for them to view the original document of the inimitable Clinton S. Burhans, Jr. it its entirety, owing to fact that not everyone has unfettered access to JSTOR. I for one would love to read it, but as it is I once again march along with the majority in not being able to veiw anything but the first page. The second is that (and I believe I've brought this up elsewhere, not going to check, though) there are conflicts and inconsistencies between the chronologies produced by various critics, so even Mr. Burhans, Jr. is not a completely reputable source. Namely, there are Doug Gaukroger (which is viewable for some sort of free spam trial here [1]) and Stephen W. Potts, who made exactly what we are looking for here [2] since it details what are solely Yossarian's actions in the story. The third is that it is structured poorly, with repeated dates on every point. That can be easily fixed by someone with The Know-How, perhaps into a table of some sort, a la Potts, but with care not to plagiarise. Enjoy. Artiste-extraordinaire 13:02, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

In answer to these points - 1) is irrelevant if inconvenient, Wikipedia will reference many sources that people do not have easy access to. In this case I am happy to cut and paste various short segments of the document, or the whole original timeline if needed. By the way if you can get access to this document it is well worth a read, especially as the most interesting bits are on the structure of themes in the novel, yet to be added to Catch-22 article.

3)Okay I need to improve the structure/format and will get round to it soon. I was not going to spend a lot of time on this at first in case people just deleted it as to controversial/impractical to start off with.

2)This is the most valid and interesting point that deserves great attention. I have not read any other timelines, so I could only comment on this one intially, I will go find out about this Doug Gaukroger version soon.

There are a number of ways to address this issue - one would be that we merge all the timelines we find but this is likely to break WP:NOR so I would suggest against it. Another way would be to compare and contrast the most notable of timelines, hence no original research. The other way is to have no timelines at all but to say there are a number out there and reference them. I think the timeline is interesting and notable enough for this encyclopedia, hence I think we should go with the compare and contrast option. Obviously this would mean a fair amount of text, and would probably fit best on its own page e.g. Catch-22 timelines. Then the Catch-22 and Yossarian articles can link to this. What do people think? Note I will cut and paste this whole discussion to Talk:Catch-22. Cheers Lethaniol 13:34, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Spoiler

This page needs a spoiler-warning... Can someone who knows the stuff fix one? I didn't want to know what is revealed late in the book(in the process of reading it, and checked the name since I saw one guy using it as nickname, thinking it might have other connections as well) - but now I evidently do.. Darn (: —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Abach (talk • contribs) 02:49, 15 April 2007 (UTC).

Poisoning the squadron

Iirc, it is not yossarian who poisons the squadron, it is the mess officor (forgotten his name), who does it to prove that they "have the taste of philistines". Why then does the article state that he does it?"(e.g., poisoning the squadron and moving the bomb line during the “Great Big Siege of Bologna”)". Yes, he move the bomb line, but he dosn't poison anyone.Laurielegit (talk) 11:23, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

The mess officer did it a second time, because Yossarian asked him to do it. Just so they wouldn't have to go to Bologna. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.61.119.88 (talk) 15:20, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

The article is "Yossarian" not "Catch-22"

This page should be expanded to cover Yossarian's entire fictional life in all Heller works in which he exists, not just the (extensively Wiki-article laden) Catch-22, in particular Closing Time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jszigeti (talk • contribs) 16:29, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Ironic humor may not be the best thing for a Wikipedia article

The article notes:

Yossarian's name is described as being "an odious, alien, distasteful name, that just did not inspire confidence." It was "...not at all like such clean, crisp, honest, American names as Cathcart, Peckem and Dreedle."

These are not normal American names, and while I laughed out loud at it, people who are not familiar with American naming conventions have no indication that this is meant as humor rather than fact. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.231.190.143 (talk) 19:16, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

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