Catch-22 Sex Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #4

Yossarian was madly in love with all of them as he made his way back to the officers' apartment, in love with Luciana, with the prurient intoxicated girl in the unbuttoned satin blouse, and with the beautiful rich countess and her beautiful rich daughter-in-law, both of whom would never let him touch them or even flirt with them. (16.29)

Yossarian falls "in love" easily, though his emotions run more toward lust than love.

Quote #5

Yossarian was madly in love with […] the beautiful rich countess and her beautiful rich daughter-in-law, both of whom would never let him touch them or even flirt with them. They doted kittenishly on Nately and deferred passively to Aarfy, but they thought Yossarian was crazy and recoiled from him with distasteful contempt each time he made an indecent proposal or tried to fondle them when they passed on the stairs. They were both superb creatures with pulpy, bright, pointed tongues, and mouths like round warm plums, a little sweet and sticky, a little rotten. They had class; Yossarian was not sure what class was, but he knew that they had it and he did not, and that they knew it, too. He could picture, as he walked, the kind of underclothing they wore against their svelte feminine parts, filmy, smooth, clinging garments of deepest black or of opalescent pastel radiance with flowering lace borders fragrant with the tantalizing fumes of pampered flesh and scented bath salts rising in a germinating cloud from their blue-white breasts. (16.29)

Yossarian's desire for these two women is never fulfilled; they are more temptations and fantasies than real women. Also, the use of "class" here is ironic because Yossarian typically uses negative words in association with the women, like "rotten," "fumes," and "germinating."

Quote #6

[Yossarian:] "Aarfy, tell me something. Don't you ever screw any of them?"

Aarfy chuckled again with conceited amusement. "Oh, sure, I prod them. Don't you worry about me. But never any nice girls. I know what kind of girls to prod and what kind of girls not to prod, and I never prod any nice girls." (16.42-43)

Aarfy glories in his ability to attract women. Also the use of "nice girls" is paradoxical, because the woman that Yossarian described earlier was anything but. Aarfy is setting up false morals to justify his behavior.