Satire In Joseph Heller's Catch-22

Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, a war novel overflowing with confusion, lust, and guilt, captures its readers and throws them into the chaotic journey of Yossarian, a witty and smart aleck soldier, trying to escape war. While Heller hides his theme with the use of satire, the ride through his character’s lives during the war, lead his readers exactly to his main point. As Catch-22 marches its way through a vivid story of flashbacks and present obstacles the men face, Heller tips his reader to the theme with the use of loose ends, irony, and exaggeration. In Catch-22, Joseph Heller uses loose ends so his theme is not directly stated in the satire. Every page you turn a new story, character, or what you think is the theme, is introduced and turns …show more content…
An example is when Heller talks about Chief White Halfoat and says that “He could barely read or write and been assigned to Captain Black as assistant intelligence officer” (43). The author included this ironic statement as a way to show how pathetic the system was in these squadrons and how they were just assigning people to positions because they needed someone there. Even if you stood in a room and picked out the person who could read and write the best out of everyone else, you still do not appoint him as an official unless you know he has more skills and can work with anything, but these men just assign so they can fill spaces which adds to the unfairness in the theme. Another example is when Yossarian talks about his fake liver pain and says that “’No, fruit is good for my liver. That’s why I never eat any” (62). The author uses this to show how Yossarian sells the fruit he receives because if he eats it and gets “better” then he will have to leave the ground and return to the air and risk his life which he has done enough times. This ironic statement gives the reader more of an idea of how the author is trying to persuade them into one direction of what exactly his theme would be especially since everything is adding up to show how crazy the life was in the squadrons. A final example of irony to support the satirical effect to the novel is when Major …show more content…
The theme is a Catch, A Catch-22, which is presented to the reader by stating “There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind………….Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.” (46) This is a form of exaggeration as there really is not a Catch-22 and every solider in the war believes there is! They exaggerate it so much that no one can see through it and everyone obeys it. There is no way out of it, and the author uses this as his theme to show how incredibly dumb, heartbreaking, and confusing the war is. As the reader continues on into other chapters, Yossarian points out directly the theme when the author states “Catch-22 did not exist, he was positive of that, but it made no difference. What did matter was that everyone thought it existed, and that was much worse, for there was no object or text to ridicule or refute, to accuse, criticize, attack, amend, hate, revile spit at, rip to shreds, trample upon, or burn up.” (409) This quote smacks the reader in the face by making them realize after the whole time what