Orr
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- For the Canadian hockey player, see Bobby Orr. Orr is also a municipality of Pulheim, and an abbreviation for exclusive disjunction.
Orr is another of the myriad characters in Joseph Heller's Catch-22. He is presumed a simpleton by the other characters, but is eventually revealed to have had the clearest view of the absurdities of their situation. He is also very mechanically adept, as he manages to make he and Yossarian (his bunk mate) a veritable palace out of a (slightly oversized) tent.
Orr has a bucktoothed smile and frequently puts crabapples in his cheeks and chestnuts in his hands. He never gives any explanation for this other than he wants big cheeks. An incident with an un-named prostitute in a Roman hotel is one of the most puzzling and elusive things about Orr (at least in Yossarian's view), and it is never entirely explained to the reader: apparently, she was hired to jump up and down in the nude, and hit a giggling, equally naked Orr on the head with her heeled shoes. Each time she jumped and hit him, Orr giggled louder, making her even more (seemingly) angry; she would then jump higher and hit him harder, causing him to giggle even more. The vicious cycle ended when she put him out cold, leaving him with a concussion.
Orr may be a play on words for 'oar', as at times Orr seems to be "up a creek without a paddle". In the end, however, he always survives, and eventually rows his way to Sweden to escape the war. The news of this escape eventually reaches Yossarian in Italy, causing him to undergo a revelation as to Orr's motives about his actions and re-energizes Yossarian to keep on "fighting the system".