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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Absurdity can lead to a deeper understanding of issues present in the modern world, no matter how much sense they may lack. Catch-22, written by Joseph Heller, is a novel that unfolds erratically through the perception of someone who is confused and greedy with an overwhelming sense of guilt. The odd pattern in which the story is revealed coexists with the genre of satire due to the fact that it implies a misguided view of reality. Yossarian is a character who demonstrates all three themes of…

it is too late. McWatt’s constantly flying too low to scare others as a practical joke causes kid Sampson’s death. Joseph displays a pattern of lack of responsibility in characters which inevitably causes a loss. It was not the first time he had flown too low, many soldiers hated that he did this and even told officers to get him to stop. No action was taken upon a soldier, who flew right over his fellow mates heads with the risk of hurting them physically or mentally. “Kid Sampson had rained…

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…

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…