Although hospitals have their drawbacks, they are symbols of refuge for Yossarian. He finds that the death rate is lower in hospitals, and few people die needlessly: "People knew a lot more about dying inside the hospital and made a much neater, more orderly job of it. They couldn't dominate death, . . . but they certainly made her behave. They had taught her some manners." People did not just disappear in clouds, like Clevinger, or get blown to bits in the hospital. They "bled to death like gentlemen . . . or expired without comment in an oxygen tent." Death is more civilized in the hospital. There are still silly rules, and Yossarian does not care for all the sick people — but it beats war.
Heller uses the soldier in white to precipitate a discussion of justice. A warrant officer with malaria questions the encased warrior's fate after Nurse Cramer pronounces him dead. "I wonder what he did to deserve it," he muses. A fighter pilot responds, "He went to war." Dunbar then points out, "We all went to war." The warrant officer continues, "That's what I mean. Why him? There just doesn't seem to be any logic to this system of rewards and punishment." Why, he wonders, should he have contracted malaria from a mosquito bite during a brief sexual romp on the beach when the worst he should have expected was a bout of syphilis? Although one pilot thinks that life has been unjustifiably good to him, most of the men think they are victims of injustice, each feeling his is the worst. Yossarian, for example, left his tent in Marrakech one night to fetch a candy bar, was lured into the bushes by some unknown WAC, and wound up with a dose of the clap. Clevinger once suggested that this should have taught Yossarian the evil of sexual misconduct. "It teaches me the evil of candy," says Yossarian.
