Joseph Heller and Catch-22
War has been around for many years; there have been many famous that have fought in war. Many of them have written novels that have reflected their experiences in war whether it was good or bad. Joseph Heller a war veteran, who fought in WW2, wrote a novel that would go on and changed his life and also went on to add a word on the dictionary. Catch-22 made Joseph Heller famous, but it made it a lot more famous. It was a book so big it broke free of its author, and then flattened him like a boulder. Joseph Heller wrote one of the breakthrough novels of the twentieth century. “Catch-22 not only became an international bestseller but also revolutionized the publishing industry that produced it; the paperback edition of the novel was successful beyond all expectations, and its millions of copies sold brought the novel into the mainstream. Catch-22 helped to usher in the decade of the 1960s that so changed America, in the process becoming one of the most beloved works of the generation that transformed the country’s culture.” (Peck)
Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn, New York, on May 1, 1923. He was the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants that came to the United States. Heller was the youngest of three children; Heller spent his childhood in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, an area of lower-and middle-class Jewish families. Both his family and his teachers recognized Heller as a
bright but bored student; he tinkered with writing short stories while still in high school (Fine). In 1942, Heller joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. “He spent his years in the army flying sixty missions as a wing bombardier in a squadron of B-25’s stationed on Corsica in the Mediterranean” (Fine). When Heller was discharge ...
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...that the usual madness associated with war are no longer reasonable in the modern era.
Works Cited Page
Fine, Richard A., and Jim O’Loughlin. "Joseph Heller." Critical Survey Of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition (2010): 1-8. Literary Reference Center. Web. 23 May 2014.
Hasley, Louis. "Dramatic Tension in Catch-22." The Midwest Quarterly 15.2 (Jan. 1974): 190-197. Rpt. in Novels for Students. Ed. Diane Telgen. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 May 2014.
Heller, Joseph, and Brice Matthieussent. Catch 22. Paris: B. Grasset, 1985. Print.
Muste, John M. "Joseph Heller." Magill’S Survey Of American Literature, Revised Edition (2006): 1-5. Literary Reference Center. Web. 23 May 2014.
Peck, David. "Just One Catch: A Biography Of Joseph Heller." Magill’S Literary Annual 2012 (2012): 1-3. Literary Reference Center. Web. 23 May 2014.
Heller, Joseph. "Chapter 21." Catch-22. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2004. 210. Print.
Catch-22 was written in 1961 as a first novel by Joseph Heller, a former army bombardier who got combat experience in World War II from his base on the island of Corsica. Catch-22 became a classic American novel. Heller went on to write several other novels deriding bureaucracy and the military-industrial complex.
Taking place during World War II, the novel “Catch-22” introduces Captain John Yossarian, who is in the United States Air Force, while in a hospital acquiring from an illness of his liver. He is constantly concerned that people are trying to kill him, proving in postponing his number of missions and going to extremities at times such as poisoning his own squadron and moving the bomb line during the Great Big Siege of Bologna. Yossarian’s character endeavors at all costs to stay in the hospital by reason of "There was a much lower death rate inside the hospital than outside the hospital, and a much healthier death rate. Few people died unnecessarily." (175). While he desperately refused to complete his never ending missions in the dilemma of Catch-22, author Joseph Heller classifies Yossarian as a hero because of his loyalty, his ability to remain sane throughout the war, and his heroic characteristics.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is one of the most well known World War II authors. His humble beginnings and early life misfortunes shaped not only his writings, but also his view of the world. His imprisonment in Dresden in World War II, however, formed his opinions about war at an early age and later inspired many of his works and style of writing. After the returning from World War II, Vonnegut voiced his sentiments through his writing that war was wasteful and uncivilized. Vonnegut developed a unique blend of sadness, satire, and simplicity, along with his ability to understand the audience, which made his novels comprehensible and inspirational to any reader. Although one of his most famous novels, Slaughterhouse Five, is based off of his experiences in World War II, during the time of its publishing, antiwar groups applied the novel’s themes to the Vietnam War. Early life tragedies and imprisonment established Kurt Vonnegut’s antiwar opinions in his semiautobiographical novel, Slaughterhouse Five, which would influence and encourage the younger Vietnam generation to protest an unnecessary war.
Bibliography:.. Works Cited Meyer, M., Ed., (1999). Bedford Introduction to Literature, 5th Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin.
“The alternating play of humor and horror creates a dramatic tension throughout that allows the book to be labeled as a classic both of humor and of war. With the humor in Catch-22 we are forced to conclude is only secondary. Where Heller comes through in unalleviated horror is where the message lies. The books humor does not alleviate the horror it heightens it by contrast.” (Riley, Carolyn & Phyllis Carmel Mendelson).
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Print.
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, is a fictitious novel that depicts life on an American bomber squadron on Pianosa, an island off the coast of Italy, during the closing years of World War II. A bombardier by the name of Yossarian, the main character in the story, is joined by many others to create a comic drama unlike any other. But aside from the entertainment, Heller uses Catch-22 to satirize many aspects of everyday life that consist of hypocrisy, corruption, and insanity. From the laziness of policeman to the fake happiness brought about by money, the novel is painted with a great number of points targeted against the faults of modern society. However, along with these smaller targets, a majority of the Heller’s satire in the novel is aimed specifically at the imperious bureaucracy in the military, the current nature of man, and the corruption of religion; all of which accentuate the senselessness of war itself. Through Yossarian, who is conscience of what is sane, along with characters who are not, Heller emphasizes his ridicule by making what is appropriate seem peculiar and what is ludicrous seem common, ultimately giving the reader a viewpoint that proves astonishingly effective.
Catch-22 is a fictional novel written by author Joseph Heller that takes place during the end of WWII. The US entered WWII in December 1941 in reaction to the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese air forces. The book is set in Italy, where the main character was stationed and where the US forces were fighting the axis powers. Heller himself was a bombardier like his main character, Joseph Yossarian. They were both also stationed on small islands off the coast of Italy: Heller on Corsica and Yossarian on Pianosa. Heller’s personal experience during the war shaped his descriptions and characterizations in the novel.
The Character of Yossarian in Catch-22 & nbsp; The main character in Catch-22, which was written by Joseph Heller in 1960, was Captain John Yossarian, a bombardier in the 256th Squadron of the U.S. Army Air Force during WWII. Yossarian's commanding officer, Colonel Cathcart, wanted a promotion so badly that he kept raising the number of missions the men in his squadron were required to fight. Yossarian resented this very much, but he couldn't do anything about it because a bureaucratic trap, known as catch-22, said that the men did not have the right to go home after they completed forty missions (the number of missions the Army demands they fly) because they had to obey their commanding officers. Yossarian was controlled by the higher authority, like the doctors restrained Joe. The whole novel was basically about how Yossarian tried to fight Catch-22. & nbsp; Yossarian can be seen as an anti-hero.
In Catch-22, opposite Miller's The Crucible, Joseph Heller utilizes his uncanny wit to present a novel fraught with dark, satiric comedy tied up in a relatively formless plot. The character of Nately acts as a focal point for many of the humorous oxymoronic criticisms contained within Catch-22, as "Nately had a bad start. He came from a good family" (Heller 34), and he ".was the finest, least dedicated man in the whole world" (35). Proliferating Catch-22, satirical dark comedy appears in every chapter, even in the depiction of death (Cockburn 179): ".McWatt turned again, dipped his wings in salute, decided, oh, what the hell, and flew into a mountain"(Heller 157). Furthermore, the plot of Catch-22 follows a cyclical structure in that repetitions of particular events recur in a planned randomness, an oxymoron that pays tribute to Catch-22 itself (Merrill 205-209). A recurring structure within Heller's novel defining his ...
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