A satirical war novel, Catch-22 follows Captain John Yossarian, a bomardier in the US Army Air Force, during World War II. Yossarian, stationed on a fictional island in the Mediterranean, grapples with the absurdity of war, the bureaucratic system, and the increasing number of missions required to be flown before discharge. The "catch-22" refers to a paradoxical situation where a pilot is declared sane if he refuses to fly missions, but insane if he requests to be relieved of them, essentially trapping him in a no-win scenario.