Madness and Absurdity in Catch-22
Bureaucracy and war are common subjects of many satirical novels, but Joseph Heller creates a complete illogical and absurd world formulated around both of these subjects in his own satirical work, Catch-22. In Heller’s formless novel Catch-22, Yossarian, the protagonist and a young bombardier, is stationed on the small island of Pianosa during World War II along with with many other “insane,” complex, and significant characters, who are forced into carrying an always increasing number of dangerous flying missions. While Yossarian is deployed, he struggles with the inevitability of death and his mortality, defining his own morals, finding a way to survive, and the horror of war during the chaos and carnage of World War II. The motifs of madness and absurdity, along with the theme of sanity vs insanity, circulate throughout; Heller uses many of the characters’ thoughts, actions, and the famous “Catch-22” to illustrate these themes. Heller uses different literary, satirical, and absurdist techniques, such as paradoxical statements and irony, to criticize the meaninglessness of war and life and the corrupt nature of the bureaucracy.
First of all, Heller’s Catch-22 is a satirical novel, as stated above. While there are many different possible satirical techniques, such as irony and exaggeration, that Heller uses, he focuses mainly on using comedy, particularly dark or black humor, to satirize the bureaucracy, war, and life. As Daniel Green says, “no character, not even the apparent protagonist, escapes the ravages of mockery and ridicule”(Green). Heller uses several main comedic events in the novel to satirize the bureaucracy. The first event is Doc Daneeka's so-called “death.” Doc Daneeka, who hate...
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...ooking at the government, would it be possible that it is just as absurd and illogical as the bureaucracy in Catch-22?
Works Cited
Green, Daniel. "A World Worth Laughing At: Catch-22 and the Humor of Black Humor." Studies in the Novel 27.2 (Summer 1995): 186-195. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism.
Kennard, Jean E. "Joseph Heller: At War with Absurdity." MOSAIC 4.3 (Spring 1971): 75-87.
Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism Select.
Merrill, Robert. "Catch-22: Its Structure and Meaning." Joseph Heller. Boston: Twayne,
1987. 33-54. Twayne's United States Authors Ser. 512
Mainuli, Matthew H., “Catch-22 and the Triumph of the Absurd”. Senior Theses, Trinity College,
Hartford, CT 2012. Trinity College Digital Repository, http://digitalrespository.trincoll.edu/theses/279 Potts, Stephen W. Catch-22: Antiheroic Antinovel. Boston, MA: Twayne,1989.Print.
Catch 22 is a story about the different personalities that can be involved in a war. Out of all the different archetypes, the three I’ve chosen are John Yossarian, Albert Tappman, and Milo Minderbinder, although, not in that order. The first character being analyzed is Yossarian, the unwilling hero of this book. Although the book labels Yossarian as the main character, he constantly tries to coward out of going to battle. The second character that will be described is Milo Minderbinder, the archetypical business person of Catch 22.He runs the camp mess hall and controls what everyone in the camp is buying, selling, and eating. Milo is constantly trying to control or manipulate the economies around him, and after he gets a large commission from Germany to bomb his own camp. This gets him in trouble with every economy he’s dealt with, and in order to “help the syndicate”, he has to give up all of his profit. The last character that will be discussed is Albert Tappman, the Chaplain, who is best known as the corrupted innocence. Although he is one of the main characters, Al is the most neglected and, the least noticed. He receives the most trouble from the other characters in the book such as the daily verbal abuse from Corporal Whitcomb, and the confusing conversations with Colonel Cathcart. By the end of the book, he also begins to question his own faith and starts bringing lies and violence into his life after the death of Nately. Every character has their own story, and by describing three of the most differential archetypes in the story, the main story is explained better.
Catch-22’s nonlinearity not only forms this piece of literature into a higher-level novel with its intricate plots and timelines, but Heller’s style also accompanies the satirical comedy of the book, leading it to be a classic example of a satirical novel, and the term “catch-22” is still used today. Without the unique chronology, Heller’s most famous novel, often regarded as one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century, would just be another war novel. The web of events, characters, and settings envelops the reader throughout the novel, providing a unique experience unlike many other books. Albeit somewhat confusing, Catch-22 is a masterpiece of comedy, a complex satire of war, and a criticism of bureaucracy that makes exquisite use of its bewildering nature. Do not steal.
Catch-22 is a black comedy novel about death, about what people do when faced with the daily likelihood of annihilation. For the most part what they do is try to
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.
“Morreall argues that, if we want to answer these questions, we shouldn’t focus on whether the joke happens to trade on a stereotype. Instead, he takes the primary problem with some humor to be that it involves disengaging from things with which we ought to be engaged.” (Morreall, 529)
Joseph Heller's early sixties novel Catch-22 is a satirical representation of war and America's bureaucratic system. It is a comical and witty book which gradually seems to become more somber in its depiction of war and human suffering. In my paper I will mainly focus on Milo Minderbinder, one of the two main characters of the book, who as the personification of modern capitalism and human greed in general just like the mood of the book progressively changes from humor to fierce satire.
What the heck was Heller up to? That is a simple, yet daunting question. In the 1961 novel Catch 22 Joseph Heller was poking fun at not only the United States Army but the entire human race. He often would point out how there was a lot of disorientation in the army and how nine out of ten times no one would know what was going on. Heller being the former veteran he was probably had a few experiences with not knowing what was going on. He himself flew 60 missions and was a bombardier like the main character the novel focuses around Captain John Yossarian. Yossarian is the protagonist of the novel and is focused solely on himself. Heller uses copious amounts of satire to tell his story and explain the bewilderment in the army. He uses a lot of comic allusions to make peoples names mean different things, for instance Lieutenant Scheisskopf actually means shi*t head, and Lieutenant Colonel Korn’s name doesn’t necessarily have a meaning like Scheisskopf’s does but his name still has symbolism built in it. Heller has a twisted sense of humor and the way he went about telling his story made you laugh and often think of people that reminded you of the characters. He not only uses comic allusions to tell his story but often uses dark humor in instances you wouldn’t think are funny. Some of the dark humor Heller uses may be offensive to some but others may view it as comic relief. Throughout the novel Yossarian is trying to get “grounded” so he can go back home but there’s always one catch, catch 22. Catch 22 is a no-win situation, every time Yossarian would try to be grounded the doctor would always bring up this catch. It appeared multiple times throughout the storyline and seemed to follow Yossarian wherever he went. One could view ...
In Slaughterhouse 5 Vonnegut proclaims through the narrator that there is no such thing as free will and that all things in life are predestined. That no matter what we chose to do we really aren’t choosing to do it at all and that the choice was already made. In Catch 22 the theme is the same just brought to our attention in a different way. Catch 22 is a paradox, leaving no way of escaping from a dilemma. No matter what we do or say we can’t escape it thus leaving us with no free will.
“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).
Many critics have attempted definitions of Black Humor, none of them entirely successfully. The most significant recurring features of these definitions are that Black Humor works with: absurdity, ironic detachment4; opposing moral views held in equipoise, humanity's lack of a sense of purpose in the unpredictable nuclear age, the realization of the complexity of moral and aesthetic experience which affects the individual's ability to choose a course of action5; and a playing with the reader's ideas of reality6.
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 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.
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 ...
3. Apte, Mahadev L. Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1985.