Catch-22 Sex Quotes

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

Quote #10

There was bare flesh lounging everywhere, most of it plump, and Hungry Joe began to die. He stood stock still in rigid, cataleptic astonishment while the girls ambled in and made themselves comfortable. Then he let out a piercing shriek suddenly and bolted toward the door in a headlong dash back toward the enlisted men's apartment for his camera, only to be halted in his tracks with another frantic shriek by the dreadful, freezing premonition that this whole lovely, lurid, rich, and colorful pagan paradise would be snatched away from him irredeemably if he were to let it out of his sight for even an instant. (23.12)

Here, the excess of sex drives men mad. The idea of a sexual paradise is so stunning for Hungry Joe that the thought of losing it becomes painful. It's all about temptation.

Quote #11

Nurse Duckett reveled in such attention […]. It gave her a peculiar feeling of warm and expectant well-being to know that so many naked boys and men were idling close by on the other side of the sand dunes. She had only to stretch her neck or rise on some pretext to see twenty or forty undressed males lounging or playing ball in the sunlight. Her own body was such a familiar and unremarkable thing to her that she was puzzled by the convulsive ecstasy men could take from it, by the intense and amusing need they had merely to touch it, to reach out urgently and press it, squeeze it, pinch it, rub it. She did not understand Yossarian's lust; but she was willing to take his word for it. (30.29)

Nurse Duckett loves receiving male attention. But she is immune to the power of her sexuality and takes it for granted because she has lived with her body all her life. It is not as remarkable to her as it is to the men, including Yossarian, who always want to touch and gain pleasure from it.

Quote #12

Nurse Duckett […] was calm in his silences. She knew she did not bore him […].

Yossarian was never lonely with Nurse Duckett, who really did know how to keep her mouth shut and was just capricious enough. (30.32-33)

Yossarian views women as seen-but-not-heard beings. He prefers an attractive woman who keeps quiet and lets him think his own thoughts in peace. Certainly, this could be read as sexism on Yossarian's part.