preview

Bureaucracy In Joseph Heller's Catch-22

Decent Essays

War has been the subject of many literary works, its use and morals often being judged harshly. However, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller heads towards a different direction, as the author tries to expose the problems of military bureaucracy. Throughout the book, the military administration is portrayed as inefficient and even corrupt, but these characteristics are most prominently expressed during Clevinger’s interrogation. Joseph Heller uses dialogue in order to satirize and bring attention to the issues plaguing the military bureaucracy. Before anything else, it must be established that the Action Board, the group of three people interrogating Clevinger, represents a military bureaucracy. On page 79, Heller describes the Action Board as “the bloated colonel with the big fat mustache, Lieutenant Scheisskopf and Major Metcalf” (79). A bureaucracy often consists of a hierarchy in which unelected officials have different tasks, and this is mirrored here in the titles of the three men. “Colonel”, “Lieutenant”, and “Major” are all indicative of different ranks, and therefore show a bureaucracy. Through the qualities of the interrogation, Joseph Heller is able to satirize several problematic characteristics of the military bureaucracy. Corruption in the management is shown when Heller hyperbolizes the reason for …show more content…

Here, the exchange suggests that the Action Board is made up of imbeciles, causing the reader to negatively view military bureaucracy. Not only does Joseph Heller portray these bureaucrats this way, he even goes as far as to making one of the names a derogatory term; Lieutenant Scheisskopf would pass as a normal name, if it wasn’t German for “shit head’. This can be regarded as the largest insult to military bureaucracy. Ultimately, Joseph Heller satirizes the Action Board as lumbering and corrupt in order to ridicule military bureaucracy in real

Get Access