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Catch 22 Satire

Decent Essays

After reading Catch-22 I cannot help but to admire the way Heller wrote a story that leaves you in suspense of what could happen next, and how he coordinated a complex story so that the end of each chapter leaves you questioning what you just read and what you assume is to come. The Oxford Companion to English Literature calls Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 a “comic, satirical, surreal, apocalyptic” novel. The Oxford Companion to English Literature is right about Catch-22 being a comic, satirical novel. Heller writes these comic scenes that have underlying satirical meanings. Catch-22 is a novel that keeps you in so much suspense that you have to read it to the end, because having only one piece of the puzzle does not satisfy your curiosity, even …show more content…

The screwy system of the ranks, the ridiculous numbers of flights the airmen are forced to complete before they can return home, the chocolate covered Egyptian cotton that Milo intends to serve in the mess hall, the suicides and the accidental deaths, and the empty feelings deep in the soul that Heller describes forms a plethora of questions in each of us as we read the story. We question the possible circumstances that land Yossarian in the hospital at the beginning of the novel, Snowden, why Yossarian feels he has to protect Orr, and who is the dead man in Yossarian’s tent. Each chapter explained an event that made us question prior …show more content…

It is comedic because events happen that seem to be funny, but they turn satirical as the repercussions of the hilarious events are quite serious. Over and over in Catch-22 we learn that the official report is different from what actually happened. For instance, Doc Daneeka’s is supposedly on McWatt’s plane when McWatt crashes it into the mountain. “The records show that you went up in McWatt’s plane to collect some flight time. You didn’t come down in a parachute, so you must have been killed in the crash” (Catch-22, pg. 341). Everyone keep telling him he is dead, even though he is very much alive. Doc Daneeka’s wife gets a letter from the War Department saying her husband is dead, while Doc Daneeka writes to her to assure her that he is alive. After being told she is “the victim of some sadistic and psychotic forger in her husband’s squadron” she becomes untraceable to Doc Daneeka (Catch-22, pg. 342). It just shows how the official document is not always what really

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