Selective Mutes

""I'm cold," Snowden said. "I'm cold."

"There, there," said Yossarian. "There, there." He pulled the rip cord of Snowden's parachute and covered his body with the white nylon sheets.

"I'm cold."

"There, there."

In this final flashback, Yossarian recounts a traumatic event in which Snowden, a fellow soldier, dies in his arms. Throughout the novel, it has become progressively more evident just how much this event impacted his thoughts on the war, as well his paranoia that everyone is out to kill him. Also, this quote is important in that it is a perfect example of a major theme in the book, the loss of words. The war has changed Yossarian so much that as Snowden laid dying in his arms, he was unable to say anything to comfort or reassure him. This theme can be traced back to the beginning of the novel where Yossarian is deleting certain words and letters out of letters. To me, this theme is ironic because the powerful bureaucracy has taken the power out of the words of the soldiers, yet they manipulate the words to bind the soldiers into flying more missions and convicting them of crimes.