In Joseph Heller's Catch-22, every man, situation, and institution is at some point called crazy. At the core of these accusations of insanity is Yossarian who serves as both the accuser and the accused. Yossarian is like the many men he encounters throughout the novel who see themselves as sane but act in a manner contrary to this description. With the apparently sane at times seeming crazier than the apparently mad and with each character accusing every other of lunacy, the definition of madness becomes blurred, and the thin line of demarcation between sanity and insanity disappears altogether.

Yossarian expresses his view early in the novel that the war in which he is engulfed is full of insanity. He tells the chaplain that the hospital, the army, and the world are full of insane people and he contends that the idea that a complete stranger desires to murder...