APPLE CHEEKS

Yossarian returns from the hospital, where he's been malingering with a fake liver condition to escape the horrors of war. He steps back into the familiar, stifling canvas walls of his tent. It is a shared space, cluttered not just with the belongings of his roommate Orr but also the haunting personal effects of the dead man nobody has cleared away. Yossarian sees Orr as a simpleton, a harmless "gnome" whose bizarre behavior is just another layer of military absurdity. But in the conversation that follows, the reader gets the first subtle clue that Orr isn't just eccentric. He is methodically practicing a survival strategy so brilliant it looks like madness. It's here that Orr casually reveals he walked around as a kid with crab apples in his cheeks (one per side) specifically to develop big "apple cheeks". He treats it like a deliberate exercise regimen.

ORR'S REASONING

"I wanted apple cheeks... Even when I was a kid I wanted apple cheeks someday, and I decided to work at it until I got them, and by God, I did work at it until I got them, and that’s how I did it, with crab apples in my cheeks all day long... One in each cheek."

He clarifies he didn't care about the color (like rosy apples) but the size: "I didn’t want apple cheeks... I wanted big cheeks. I didn’t care about the color so much, but I wanted them big."

He compares it to "one of those crazy guys you read about who go around squeezing rubber balls all day long just to strengthen their hands," emphasizing persistence.

Horse chestnuts were substitutes when crab apples weren't available because they had a "better shape," though he insists "the shape doesn’t matter a bit."

THE RUBBER BALLS DIVERSION

Orr also explains carrying rubber balls in his hands as a clever cover to protect his "good reputation":

"With rubber balls in my hands I could deny there were crab apples in my cheeks. Every time someone asked me why I was walking around with crab apples in my cheeks, I’d just open my hands and show them it was rubber balls I was walking around with, not crab apples, and that they were in my hands, not my cheeks."

He admits it was a "good story" but hard to convey clearly with his mouth full, adding to the absurdity.

Yossarian finds this baffling and decides it's futile to probe further, thinking Orr might even be mocking him by speaking "with the tip of his tongue in one of his apple cheeks."

THE GIRL IN ROME DIVERSION

Just as Orr seems ready to reveal why he wanted big cheeks in the first place, he pivots to the incident with the prostitute:

"Do you want to know why I wanted big cheeks?... 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?"

At this point, the narrative abruptly shifts away from Orr's explanation. Instead, it dives into a vivid, chaotic description of the Rome incident: the tall, strapping prostitute shrieking and jumping to strike Orr repeatedly with her spiked heel, both of them naked in a crowded apartment hallway, with onlookers (including an old cackling man and clucking woman) watching in amusement. Orr giggles throughout, infuriating her more, until she knocks him out with a concussion.

The text explicitly notes the mystery: "Whatever he had done or tried to do or failed to do behind the closed door of Nately’s whore’s kid sister’s room was still a secret. The girl wouldn’t tell... Orr might tell, but Yossarian had decided not to utter another word."

THE LONG DECEPTION

For hundreds of pages after this conversation, Orr remains a tragicomic figure. He continues to endure horrific "accidents," getting shot down on nearly every mission, crash landing into the ocean, and tinkering endlessly with tiny valves in the tent while Yossarian watches in pity. To everyone in the squadron, Orr is a hapless victim of bad luck and incompetence, a man too foolish to be afraid.

Eventually, Orr disappears for good after yet another crash landing in the Mediterranean. Yossarian mourns him as just another casualty of the war's absurdity, assuming his roommate has drowned. The "apple cheeks" and the prostitute incident fade into memory as mere examples of Orr's baffling life.

THE REVELATION

The answer doesn't come until Chapter 42, when the chaplain bursts in with electrifying news: Orr has washed ashore in Sweden. Yossarian realizes his "crazy" roommate had been playing them all from the start. The repeated crash landings, the bizarre stories, the insistence that Yossarian fly with him. Orr was practicing his escape.

And the prostitute? Yossarian finally understands: Orr had paid her to hit him on the head with her shoe. He was trying to get a concussion severe enough to be grounded or sent home. When she wouldn't inflict enough damage, he had to resort to the crashes instead. The apple cheeks, the rubber balls, the rambling explanations. All of it was camouflage for a man engineering his freedom while everyone dismissed him as a harmless fool.

Orr wasn't a victim of the military's madness. He weaponized the appearance of madness against it. While others flew themselves to death, he rowed to neutral ground.