Catch-22 question

The book was brilliant on so many levels, paradoxes included (of course). The characters, their names and their stories have stayed with me for at least the past four decades. Very few books make it into that rarefied atmosphere in my own personal experience. A work of true genius, imho.

Why would one be exclusive of the other?

the latter

The latter. The paradoxes emphasize the paradoxes of war and the men who fought them. If you look for logic, you will fail.
Igor

It's a twisted logic: there was a clear reason for the catch 22.

I think it was a hit because the paradoxes were logically correct.

It's a book I have mixed feelings about; it was only in the last two or three chapters that it caught my imagination - but it really did then. Even so, I think the war-and-madness paradox was better put in Rebecca West's The Return of the Soldier ....a very different book but with the same idea at its core.

it's about war and even soldiers dont really expect to kill and see death up so close.

I'm only a 1/5th into it so far, but I think that it's a mixture of both. The former being that many of the paradoxes are correct and in that shows the frustration of the individual. The latter reflects more of the meaning of the book and the paradox of war, and the human conflict.