I'm cold,' Snowden whimpered. 'I'm cold.''There, there,' Yossarian mumbled mechanically in a voice too low to be heard. 'There, there.'Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.
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In this intense moment from Joseph Heller's "Catch-22," the character Snowden expresses his vulnerability, shivering and proclaiming his coldness. Yossarian, witnessing the dire situation, is also consumed by a profound chill that reflects his despair. As he looks at Snowden's body, he confronts a grim realization about human existence and mortality.
The visceral imagery reveals the harsh truth that without life, the human body is reduced to mere matter, subject to the same fate as any organic waste. Snowden's fate symbolizes the fragility of the human spirit, underscoring a bleak commentary on life and death. The passage encapsulates the existential themes of the narrative, suggesting that when stripped of spirit, humanity becomes nothing more than trash, reinforcing the notion that life and its essence are transient.
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