In the book Catch-22, by Joseph Heller you pick up a lot of things about life and death, the ups and downs of human life, and the struggle to survive. You learn much about war and how sometimes the enemy isn't necessarily the people wearing a different uniform. You fight people in the same uniform and fight against yourself and most of all you fight death.
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Yossarian's fear of death becomes very obvious from the beginning of the book, when he hides in a hospital bed faking a disease. "Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice," but that liver pain was never jaundice and never went away until Yossarian decided he wanted it to go away. He was in the hospital simply because he didn't want to be in the war. Yossarian was very fearful of what could happen to him when he was in the air as a bombardier in a B-25. "They"re all trying to kill me," is a recurring quote from Yossarian, who really does think that everybody is trying to kill him. It is a constant fear of his that he will die during the war and not of natural causes. With so much death happening around him he struggles to keep his mind right, and his head on straight. "Yossarian shuddered with revulsion at the queer sight of his wound and screamed at Aarfy for help," Yossarian has been shot in the leg and screams for his life and Aarfy can not hear him. Yossarian is screaming desperately since he thinks that his balls have been shot off, but his screams go unheard by the man sitting next to him in the plane. After crying his eyes out from screaming he comes to find out that the wound is only minor, but it shows his immense fear of death and his severe need for survival. Yossarian's fear of death grows through out the book simply because his friends are constantly dieing around him.
The death of all of Yossarian's close friends hurts him in an enormous way. When his friend Snowden dies it hits him very hard and he recalls this memory multiple times during the book.