Explanation of The Character's Name
Orr may be a play on the word “oar”, as every time Orr flies a mission his plane is always damaged and he seems to be "up a creek without a paddle". Also he paddles his way to freedom in Sweden, using an oar, after practicing with a full crew.
The word orr means "nose" in Hungarian, in all means, e.g. human or animal nose, fuselage nose, bow of a ship's hull, etc. and it also can be used in structures as in "has a nose for", referring to one's smartness and adaptability.
It may also be a play on the word 'or', as in stay or leave, escape or die. Throughout most of the book, Orr is the only character who understands that this is even a choice; he spends most of his time either practicing for the chance to exercise his options (crashing repeatedly in the Mediterranean) or paddling to freedom after he crashes successfully. In the end, it appears that Orr's behaviour with the crabapples and other incidents were clues to indicate that Orr was the only character in the book who understood how to defeat the law of Catch-22.
Read more about this topic: Orr (Catch-22)
Famous quotes containing the words explanation of the, explanation of, explanation and/or character:
“Herein is the explanation of the analogies, which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance of one mind, working in many materials to many temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Painting was called “silent poetry,” and poetry “speaking painting.” The laws of each art are convertible into the laws of every other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To develop an empiricist account of science is to depict it as involving a search for truth only about the empirical world, about what is actual and observable.... It must involve throughout a resolute rejection of the demand for an explanation of the regularities in the observable course of nature, by means of truths concerning a reality beyond what is actual and observable, as a demand which plays no role in the scientific enterprise.”
—Bas Van Fraassen (b. 1941)
“How strange a scene is this in which we are such shifting figures, pictures, shadows. The mystery of our existence—I have no faith in any attempted explanation of it. It is all a dark, unfathomed profound.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The image cannot be dispossessed of a primordial freshness, which idea can never claim. An idea is derivative and tamed. The image is in the natural or wild state, and it has to be discovered there, not put there, obeying its own law and none of ours. We think we can lay hold of image and take it captive, but the docile captive is not the real image but only the idea, which is the image with its character beaten out of it.”
—John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)