My book club just finished this book and it is still haunting my thoughts. One quote from near the end of the book about Yossarian bearing responsibility for his friend's death really stood out to me, and neither my book club or the internet seems to have discussed it much:
"Yossarian thought he knew why Nately's whore held him responsible for Nately's death and wanted to kill him. Why the hell shouldn't she? It was a man's world, and she and everyone younger had every right to blame him and everyone older for every unatural tragedy that befell them, just as she, even in her grief, was to blame for every manmade misery that landed on her kid sister and on all other childeren behind her. Someone had to do something sometime. Every victim was a culprit, every culprit a victim, and somebody had to stand up sometime to try to break the lousy chain of inherited habit that was imperiling them all." Ch39 The eternal city
As a millenial, it immediately made me think of climate change inaction, and how by silently disagreeing or merely trying to survive, very little is done against the crushing inertia of the systems that have existed before we were born.
It wasnt until I was trying to find what the author intended for the reader to take from this passage, that I think it recalls back to Yossarian's debates with Clevinger, and shows Yossarian adding nuance to his previously extremely individualist, survival-at-all-costs view. In chapter 8, he acknowledges that the war must be fought and men would neccessarily die, but he is adamant that he would not be the victim. In the battle of Bologna, he is willing to allow the ground troops and other bombers to go into danger to keep himself out. After chapter 39, he refuses to take the deal for safety and is willing to risk his freedom for the kid sister.
This one passage is adding new life and complexity to the debate in the book that on first pass was pretty easy to agree with Yossarian wholecloth.
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