Yossarian’s tent-mate, Orr becomes skilled at crash landing his damaged plane. During one such crash landing Orr disappears. Yossarian comes to realize that Orr was purposely getting his plane damaged in order to practice crash landing, and that Orr survived his last crash and has fled to Sweden. This encourages Yossarian to do the same.
Orr Quotes in Catch-22
The Catch-22 quotes below are all either spoken by Orr or refer to Orr. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 3
Quotes
Do you remember . . . that time in Rome when that girl who can’t stand you kept hitting me over the head with the heel of her shoe? Do you want to know why she was hitting me?
Related Characters:
Orr (speaker), John “Yo-Yo” Yossarian
Related Symbols:
Rome
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Catch-22 LitChart as a printable PDF.
Orr Character Timeline in Catch-22
The timeline below shows where the character Orr appears in Catch-22. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2: Clevinger
Yossarian lives in a “luxurious” tent with Orr, another officer, who is very handy and has outfitted the tent with a stove and...
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Chapter 3: Havermeyer
...the dead man and his personal effects, which Major Major, the squadron commander, won’t acknowledge. Orr is fixing the gas line to the stove he is building. Orr tells a story:...
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Orr reveals that he simply wanted big cheeks—but that he carried around a rubber ball to...
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Chapter 5: Chief White Halfoat
Daneeka explains, further, that Orr could be grounded, since he is mentally unstable, but he’d have to ask—and if he...
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Yossarian is reminded of a discussion he once had with Orr about Appleby, another soldier and a great Ping-Pong player. Appleby, Orr claims, has “flies in...
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Chapter 6: Hungry Joe
...transitions to a story of a Ping-Pong match between Appleby (the group’s best player) and Orr. Orr becomes so enraged with Appleby, who is winning handily, that he smashes him in...
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Chapter 15: Piltchard & Wren
They escape enemy fire, but other planes have been damaged in the strike. Yossarian realizes Orr has been hit, and he scans the horizon wildly for him, realizing that, if Orr...
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Yossarian waits until Orr returns—Orr’s plane struggles to a crash landing, but Orr is OK. Yossarian is exhausted and...
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Chapter 22: Milo the Mayor
...will not help with the plan. Instead, Yossarian begins flying on missions with Milo and Orr, picking up items for the group’s mess. Milo slowly reveals the extent of his world-wide...
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Milo flies Yossarian and Orr to Naples, then to Sicily, where Yossarian spends the night with a woman whose head...
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Yossarian flies with Milo and Orr to Palermo, where it appears that Milo receives a good deal of special treatment. In...
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Yossarian and Orr are then dragged from location to location by Milo, who is engaged in byzantine business...
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At the end of “rest” leave, after one week, Orr and Yossarian are exhausted from their travels around the Mediterranean. But Milo says it’s worth...
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Chapter 28: Dobbs
Yossarian learns from Sergeant Knight that Orr had to crash-land his plane in the water while Yossarian was in the hospital during...
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Yossarian returns to his tent and finds Orr, safely back, and tinkering again with the stove. Yossarian asks him not to work on...
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Orr tells Yossarian they should fly together, but Yossarian counters that Orr is shot down or...
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Yossarian watches Orr fiddle with the very small components of the stove, and the two talk of prostitutes...
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Later, in another Bologna mission, Orr is shot down, ditches, and escapes in his own life raft that drifts away from...
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Chapter 30: Dunbar
...many yards away from the village, as does Yossarian. Dunbar has become especially bitter following Orr’s disappearance; Yossarian believes that the stresses of war are getting to Dunbar.
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Chapter 32: Yo-Yo’s Roomies
It is discovered that Yossarian has been living in a tent alone, after Orr’s disappearance, although Yossarian claims that the dead man, Mudd, is still in the tent as...
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...returns to his tent and finds that the four young roommates are burning some of Orr’s special reserve of birch logs in the stove. They have also moved the dead man’s...
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