Joseph Heller

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22,” writes Heller, squatting low at the edge of the dimly lit ring, ready to tackle his target at the slightest indication of vulnerability. Dancing nimbly through the murky clouds of confusion obscuring war, Heller strikes out at insanity, grappling adroitly with his slippery objective before taking him down to the sweat-soaked mat. In a maneuver of grotesque dexterity, Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22, articulates the public’s growing concern toward foreign entanglement in the era subsequent to World War Two, facing off not only against the inoperable chaos that is war, but also against the unruly opponent of insanity. Populating Heller’s Catch-22 is an array of miscellaneous characters representing a diverse and laughably comical smattering of backgrounds and mentalities. By throwing these unique identities into the melting pot of military requisition, Heller brews a potent antiwar concoction piping with animosity and bitter with fear. From Yossarian, a pilot whose only objective is staying alive, to his commanding officer, whose main goal is to push his men past the brink of sanity, the military base is populated with a memorable, sad, and hilarious assortment characters who all embody minute aspects of Heller’s antiwar crusade. As the story progresses, each page…

Joseph Heller satirizes the hospital, and medical professions overall, throughout Catch-22 so as to draw attention to numerous of issues within the medical realm and to challenge the norm of medical professionals and hospitals. Heller makes use of many different literary and satiric tools to portray the issues within the novel, but more importantly to make a connection to real life issues within the medical world. The satiric angle and comedic relief that the medical world offers within the…

Catch 22 was written by Joseph Heller, who is well known for writings satire novels. Joseph Heller, the author, uses many different examples of satire.Catch-22 is usually called a comic satirical novel. A comic satirical novel is a literary genre in which comedic forms , exaggeration, are used to focus on human weakness and societal problems.In Catch 22 the author takes the reader on an emotional trip through the extended use of satire. Satire is the use of humor to expose others stupidity…

that has been asked since the dawn of nation states. In Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Heller depicts the confusing and dangerous dilemma of self versus state that his protagonist Yossarian faces. Forced to act against his own best interests by his military superiors, Yossarian must look within himself to decide what he truly cares about. Heller uses Yossarian;s interactions with other characters to demonstrate the different opinions of the overarching question of self preservation versus state…

Along with all the death that war has brought, the dilemma of how carelessly lives are thrown away is also raised. In Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, he satirizes the struggles of wartime for a combat pilot Yossarian that finds himself unable to escape the “Catch 22” system. Forced to fly seemingly endless missions alongside high death probabilities, Yossarian finds that the enemies are all around him from his own living cells to his commanding officer. The novel follows him and his companion’s…

In Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, much of the satire is being directed toward the military, military high command to be specific. Such is the case for the constant increase in the number of flight missions throughout the book. From 50 missions at the beginning of the book to 80 at the end, the increase never ceased and they were often increased for odd reasons. For example, when Kid Sampson and McWatt die, “Colonel Cathcart was so upset […] he raised the missions to sixty-five” (Heller 339) and “he…

The Original Catch-22 War is brutal and cruel, but it can also absurd as Joseph Heller vividly shows in his first novel Catch-22. Heller would certainly know about war. He fought in World War 2 as a bombardier and flew 60 missions over Italy. After his tour of duty, he wrote Catch-22, a satire, to protest war and show the irrationality of it. In the novel, Yossarrian is a bombardier pilot who is trying to survive in a squadron where the colonel keeps raising the number of missions they have…

Catch-22 stood out to me when I realized it introduced the first use of the phrase catch-22. The novel piqued my curiosity and I had to know the origin story of one of my favorite phrases. I enjoyed reading Catch-22, yet I could not get past some aspects of the novel. Joseph Heller’s uncanny ability to meander to a completely unrelated topic to the current storyline, then relate it back to a previous topic in the novel had me conflicted throughout the whole book. I greatly enjoyed the…

of a soldier. This satire conveys characters as being insane, while they are in truth the only sane people there. Joseph Heller redefines the word sanity through his satirical war novel. Yossarian's character embodies the stereotype of mental issues during wartime. The army sees Yossarian as a lunatic -- always pulling crazy antics which do not comply with the standard behavior. As a result of this, he was labeled as insane. Throughout the novel, Yossarian tries to remove himself from the war…

Catch-22 is a satirical novel by Joseph Heller. The novel was published in 1961, and its setting takes place during World War II. The unique title, Catch-22, refers to an unsolvable puzzle in which a character is frustrated by a paradox situation that prohibits any attempt to break free from them. Catch-22 is often referenced as one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century. The novel follows John Yossarian, an Air Force bombardier. It focuses on Yossarian and the other airmen, and…