Catch-22

Contemplation in Insanity——a book report of Catch-22 If God can do anything, can He make a stone so heavy that He won’t be able to life it? As long as you think for a moment, you’ll find this question unanswerable. You may consider this famous fallacy a clever trick but what if you literally believe in it? What if people fight for their belief in an insane statement? You can find the answer in Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.The Plot:During the second half of World War II, a soldier named Yossarian is stationed with his Air Force squadron on the island of Pianosa. All he wants is to survive the madness of war. He is convinced that everyone is trying to kill him, which is understandable seeing as how he’s fighting in a war, where everyone really is trying to kill another. Yossarian has to survive the dangerous combat missions he flies, while Colonel Cathcart continues to increase the number of missions hie men must complete.The novel does not flow in chronological order, but instead involve frequent flashbacks. Therefore it maybe confusing and so is war. The first part concentrates on the narrative present, the second part on the Great Big Siege of Bologna, the third part returns to the present, the fourth part centers on Milo’s actions, and finally on Yossarian’s escape from the military.Many of Yossarian’s actions are either in response to the death of a fellow soldier, or as a tactic to avoid flying dangerous missions. The Air Force administration’s action, on the contrary, are based on improving the ranks of the individual officers or making America look good in the war. What we come to hate about military bureaucracy as we read Catch-22 is its lack of logic; men are asked to risk their lives again and again for reasons that are utterly illogical and unimportant. The novel ends on an upbeat note with Yossarian learning of Orr ( his friend )’s miraculous escape to Sweden and Yossarian’s pledge to follow him there. He successfully stays sane and alive in the face of unfathomable danger and cold bureaucratic insensitivity.The Characters:Captain John Yossarian. John Yossarian, the protagonist of Catch-22, is both a member of the squadron’s community and alienated by it. Although he flies and liveswith the men, he is marked as an outsider by the fact that many of the men think he is insane. But Yossarian’s characteristics are not those of a typical hero. He does not risk his life to save others; in fact, his primary goal throughout the novel is to avoid risking his life whenever possible. Maybe it is because that the system of values around Yossarian is so skewed that this approach seems to be the only truly moral stance he can take, if only because it is so logical. In a world where life itself is so undervalued and so casually lost, it is possible to redefine heroism as simple self-preservation. In the end, when offered a choice between his own safety and the safety of the entire squadron, Yossarian is unable to choose himself over others. This concern for others complicates the simple logic of self-preservation, and creates its own Catch-22: life is not worth living without a moral concern for the well-being of others, but a moral concern for the well-being of others endangers one’s life.Milo Minderbinder.Representing an extreme version of capitalist free enterprise that has spiraled out of control, Milo seems simultaneously brilliant and insane. What starts out as a business in black-market eggs turns into a worldwide enterprise in which, he claims, “everyone has a share.” He lies, cheats and steals his way through the war. The Germans pay him to bomb his own base and the Americans pay him to bomb Germans. He uses military planes to fly his goods from place to place, and lives in palaces. Milo tells the men in his squadron that they all have a share of his profits, but he bombs his own squadron as part of a deal he has made with the Germans. His willingness to allow his own camp to be bombed shows his complete disregard for the sides drawn by the war, and the men’ s acceptance of payment for being bombed shows that Milo is not alone in placing a high value on making money.The Themes and Ideas:Catch-22.There’s only one catch to Yossarian’s plan to save himself, and that’s Catch-22. This passage from Chapter 5 marks the novel’s first mention of the paradoxical law called “Catch-22.”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 was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he wassane he would have 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. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.The more Yossarian learns about Catch-22, though, the bigger it grows, each new clause as infuriating and paradoxical as the last. Catch-22, we learn, is the Bible of bureaucracy — every pointless and petty regulation made by someone who has never seen a battlefield to make themselves look good with no sleep lost for the people like Yossarian who get killed in the process.There’s no reasoning or arguing with Catch-22. It’s not personal. It’s just the rules, and if the rules say that Yossarian has to die, then that’s what Yossarian has to do.Over the course of the novel, Catch-22 is described in a number of different ways that can be applied to a number of different aspects of wartime life; here, however, Catch-22 affects Yossarian most specifically. Catch-22 is alarmingly persuasive; even Yossarian accepts what seems to be its logical infallibility. But Catch-22 is an abstract thing; we find out later that Yossarian believes that Catch-22 does not really exist. It is a trap made up of words, and words are faulty things, often misrepresenting reality. What is so upsetting about the way Catch-22 is applied throughout the novel is that real men are sent into real peril based on a few unreal and unreliable words. The the pointlessness of the fact makes Yossarian crazy.Personality in the insane world.Unlike other anti-romantic war novels, Catch-22relies heavily on humor to convey the insanity of war, presenting the horrible meaninglessness of armed conflict through a kind of desperate absurdity rather than through graphic depictions of suffering and violence. Catch-22also distinguishes itself from other anti-romantic war novels through its core values: the story of Yossarian, the protagonist, is ultimately not one of despair but one of hope. He believes that the positive urge to live and to be free can redeem the individual from the dehumanizing machinery of war. The novel is told as a series of loosely related, tangential stories in no particular chronological order. The narrative that emerges from this structural tangle upholds the value of the individual in the face of the impersonal, collective military mass; at every stage it mocks insincerity and hypocrisy, even when such values appear triumphant.Despite its World War II setting, Catch-22is often thought of as a signaturenovel of the 1960s and 1970s. It was during those decades that American youth truly began to question authority. Hippies, university protests, and the civil rights movement all marked the 1960s as a decade of revolution, and Heller’s novel fit in perfectly with the spirit of the times. In fact, Heller once said, “I wasn’t interested in the war in Catch-22. I was interested in the personal relationships in bureaucratic authority.” Whether Heller was using the war to comment on authority or using bureaucracy as a statement about the war, it is clear that Catch-22 is more than just a war novel. It is also a novel about the moral choices that every person must make when faced with a system of authority whose rules are both immoral and illogical. This reminds me the dark ten years of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Millions of people were persecuted and suffered a wide range of abuses and millions of people became insane illogical, which makes the perseverance of personal principles more valuable and remarkable.Reference:[1]约瑟夫·海勒.第二十二条军规[M].南京: 译林出版社.[2]常文革.黑色幽默的典范[N].长春师范学院学报，2005-9。

An Existential Analysis of Catch-22ContentsAcknowledgements (i)Abstract(English) (ii)Abstract(Chinese) (iii)1. Introduction (1)1.1 Catch-22 (1)1.2 Writing Background (1)2. The Existentialism (2)2.1 “I think, so I a m” and “e x istence before essence” (2)2.2 The initiative of the soldiers (3)3. Free Choice (4)3.1 Orr (5)3.2 Yossarian (6)4. The Absurdity of the World (7)4.1 The Absolute power of the Bureaucracy (7)4.2 The Moral Insanity (8)4.3 The Inevitability of Death (9)5. Conclusion (10)Work Cited (12)AbstractThis paper is going to talk about the existentialism in Joseph Heller’s masterpiece Catch-22. As regards to the influence of existentialism on literature, Jean Paul Sartre’s theories are the one of the great significance, which is the main concern in this thesis.Joseph Heller (1923-1999) is one of the most representative writers of Black Humor, which forecasts the dominating of American post-modernism literature. The heart of Black Humor is the description of the absurdity of the world, which is also a doctrine of existentialism. So it is said that existentialism is one of the origins of Black Humor.In Catch-22, there are bounds of freedom and the struggles to get off from them, which is a main theme of the book. And as regard to Sartre’s existentialism, the central thought is the freedom to choose what one wants to be or to do, which agrees with the theme of Catch-22 above I have mentioned. So in this paper I just choose Sartre’s existentialist thoughts to analyze it, despite other existentialists. Existentialism is a different point of view to look at the traditional war-novel, from which I think a deeper and more theoretical criticism of the war as well as that of the world can be obtained.For the value of this paper, first of all, it will prove Catch-22 an existential novel. Both centered on the theme of freedom, this novel and existentialism share the same basis, so it’s natural to connect them together. Also, there is chapter four on absurdity to illustrate this point. Thirdly, I want to stress the subjectivity and advantages of existentialism. Although many people think it as superficial and spiritual, it stresses on humanism, paying attention to initiative and subjectivity, which are still hot centers of discussion till now.Key words: Catch-22;Existentialism; Free choice; Absurdity内容摘要约瑟夫·海勒的代表作《二十二条军规》中渗透着存在主义的思想,这也是本论文讨论的主旨所在。

Detailed Introduction
* one immoral aspect ★He would pretend to be ill and then be sent to the hospital every time when he was afraid of the war or his friends have been killed. ★He tried many ways to be proved that he is a maniac so that he can be exempted from flying any mission.
*Artistic Techniques
ⅠBlack humor ⒈Background of black humor ♥credited to the Anthology of Black Humor a 1939 French anthology of 45 writers edited by Andre Breton. ♥In the United States, black humor as a literary genre came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. ♥It is one of the most representative genres in the American literature in 1960s ♥It was usually used in literature, drama, and film, is a kind of grotesque or morbid humor retaining a serious tone .
The term postmodern literature is used to describe certain characteristics of post–World War II literature and a reaction against ideas implicit in modernist literature. Postmodernist writers often point to early novels and story collections as inspiration for their experiments with narrative and structure.It is a real portrait of the real American social life. The symbolic significance of the Catch-22 is that it insinuates the invisible black hand manipulate vast network of western society. It symbolizes the artificial binding that exists everywhere. It indicates that it is quite difficult to get rid of the living environment of people. Although the novel’s background is war, but its real theme is contemporary, and it is a book in the era of peace. Catch-22 reveals the conflict between commercial value and moral values of the capitalist world. In that kind of world, there are only evil and morality.

Anti-hero
• The anti-hero is also an important figure in modern drama, both in the theatre of the absurd and in the tragedies of Arthur Miller, notably Death of a Salesman (1949).
Joseph Heller (1923-1999)
an American satirical novelist, short story writer and playwright. He wrote the influential novel Catch-22 about American servicemen during World War II. Catch-22 is the archetypal
Black Humor
• In literature, drama, and film, grotesque or morbid humor used to express the absurdity, insensitivity, paradox, and cruelty of the modern world.
• Ordinary characters or situations are usually exaggerated far beyond the limits of normal satire or irony. Black humor uses devices often associated with tragedy and is sometimes equated with tragic farce.
Black Humor