JOSEPH HELLER:

CATCH-22
May 1, 1923 – December 12, 1999
 ABOUT JOSEPH HELLER
 Joseph Heller was born in Coney Island in Brooklyn,
New York as the son of poor Jewish parents from
Russia.

 In 1942, at age 19, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps.

 Two years later he was sent to Italy, where he flew 60

combat missions as a B-25 bombardier.

 After the war, Heller studied English at the University

of Southern California.

 He taught composition at Penn State University and

briefly worked for Time.

 He died of a heart attack at his home in December

1999, shortly after the completion of his final novel,
Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here (1998)
 FUNDAMENTAL INFORMATION ABOUT CATCH - 22

FEATURES OF POSTMODERNISM AND ANTINOVEL IN

CATCH – 22:
Recalling, thinking

Not plot is important, but feelings / thinking of

characters

Time jumping, not coherent / logical text, usually just

description of situations / settings / feelings of
characters ...

Frequent breakdown of communication

Text broken into fragments → different fragments are

put together in book
 Chapter named according characters, but chapter is
not only about the one protagonist who has been
mentioned in title of chapter

 Feeling that lines / chapters / themes are randomly

chosen

 Irony / black humor / absurdity / paradox

 Usage of other languages – French in Rome

 Real life is mentioned – sex, prostitution, swear

words, nudity, description of Rome

 Meditation about life, death, God, justice, time, years

 FUNDAMENTAL INFORMATION ABOUT WORK

 type of work: a comic but serious US novel (1961) (film

version was made in 1970) about the madness of war,
specifically antinovel - new novel - a fictional work
characterized by the absence of traditional elements of the
novel, such as coherent plot structure, important are
feelings / mind of character / thinking , reducing of facts,
omniscient narrator ...

 genre: satirical war novel (It is one of few antiwar works -

opposed to war.)

 narrator: The anonymous narrator is omniscient (he knows

everything), seeing and knowing all things. The narrator
presents characters and events in a humorous, satirical light
but seems to have real sympathy for some of them as well.

 setting (time /place): Near the end of World War II -

Pianosa, a small island off the coast of Italy in air base
number 256 of American army.
 point of view: The narrator speaks in the third person,
focusing mostly on what Yossarian does and what
Yossarian thinks and feels. Occasionally, the narrator
also shows us how other characters, such as the
chaplain or Hungry Joe, experience the world around
them.

 tone: The narrator presents ridiculous / funny behavior

and illogical arguments in a flatly satirical tone, never
stating outright that matters are funny, but always
making the reader aware of how offensively strange the
characters and situations are.

 tense: The story is written in the past tense. Although

the book settles into a more chronological order at the
end, most of Catch-22 is told out of sequence, with
events from the past mixed in with events from the
present = antichronological – mixture of tense
 major conflict: Yossarian struggles to stay alive, despite the
many parties who seem to want him dead.

 themes: the absolute power of bureaucracy, lost of religious

faith, atheism (Corporal Whitcomb - The chaplain’s atheist
assistant), the impotence of language (eliminated words in
letters by Yossarian or when Snowden dies in the back of
the plane, all that Yossarian can think of to say is “there,
there,” over and over. He knows his words have no power
to comfort Snowden, but he does not know what else to
do.), the necessity of death, lack of communication, justice
(Major Major is promoted because of a computer error . In
the world of the novel, men are rewarded for wrongdoing
and punished for being capable. When the Man in White is
found dead by the nurse, she is blamed for his death by the
men. None of them thinks that she actually did anything to
kill him; her declaration that he is no longer alive is what
makes her guilty.), prostitution, misogyny, racism (Chief
White Halfoat – Indian from Oklahoma), brutality / violence
 motifs: Catch-22 (A phrase describing a paradoxical situation
where a person feels trapped. A bogus army regulation. Its
twisted logic makes it impossible to avoid combat, to exercise
independence, or to disobey superior officers.), number of
missions (The number of missions is the primary trap from
which the men in the squadron are unable to escape: each time
Hungry Joe completes his missions or Yossarian comes near
completing them, the number is raised yet again. The required
number of missions, is what prompts Orr and Yossarian to look
for alternative methods of escape.), Washington Irving (ideal
name for bureaucracy)

 symbols: the soldier in white (a bandage-wrapped, faceless,

nameless body that lies in the hospital in the first chapter of the
novel, represents the way the army treats men as
interchangeable objects), hospital and beach ( places of
relaxation, good place for escaping from horrible reality),
Snowden’s death (reality of dead, dead is very closed with lifes
of soldiers), Rome (place of happiness for soldiers – love / sex,
but also full of dangerous situations), rain (hope, they can't fly,
when it is raining, cloudy, ...)
 idea: Criticism of absurdity of war and killing,
military machine and the bureaucracy.

 protagonist: John Yossarian, an Air Force captain and

bombardier in Pianosa

 other point: Closing Time (1994), which is about the

characters of Catch-22 when they are older

 other works of Heller:

 Something Happened (1974)

 Good as Gold (1979)
 God Knows (1984)
 Picture This (1988)
YOSSARIAN – MAJOR CHARACTER
 ANALYSIS OF CHARACTERS
MAJOR CHARACTER: YOSSARIAN - 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, he shouldn't risk his own life in order to save
everybody else’s. = ANTIHIRO
Even though he is determined to save his own life at all costs, he also
cares deeply for the other members of his squadron and is traumatized
by their deaths. He has still feeling, that somebody wants to kill him. He
has strong self-preservation.
OTHER POINTS ABOUT HIM – he likes chess, he lives in the best tent
with his best friend Orr, he usually pretends ache of liver, when he
wants to go to hospital for relaxation and for escaping from horrible
world there, he controlled letters and signs them as Washington Irving
and he has many lovers – prostitutes, but he really loves Nurse Duckett,
he badly stands death of Snowden and as a protest he is naked –
without clothes for a long time, when Orr is lost, he wants to be alone.
Orr has escaped to Sweden and Yossarian, at the end of novel, escapes
there, too and he saves his life.
MILO: A fantastically powerful mess officer, Milo controls an
international black-market syndicate, he owns dining room. He
takes his job as mess officer very, very seriously; as a result, the
troops in Yossarian’s division eat better than any others. Milo
bombs his own squadron for money. He still lies and it seems that
he helps to whole world, people in other countries love him, but
they don't know, that he has profit from their own poverty.

DOCTOR DANEEKA: very young doctor, he is afraid of war and he

protests, because he wants to be at home with his family and
because he is very young to die, sentimental, self – confident
person, as a doctor mentions, that person has not chance to choose
his kind of life, but you should value it. He has live dreams with his
wife – sex, and he has still worry about lifes of his family. During
one flight he was written on the list of aircrew and fly dropped and
they wrote letter to his wife that he died, she trusted and left the
house. Doctor also wrote letter to her, but there was no chance to
contact her, because he was officially dead. – loss of identity
NATELY: One of Yossarian's co-pilots. He falls in love with a whore
he meets in Rome while staying at a specially rented apartment.
Unfortunately, Colonel Cathcart threatens to send Nately home
without the whore unless he continues to fly more missions. Nately
is killed just after he tells Yossarian that he will probably manage to
survive after flying so many missions. He is killed during Milo's
bombing of their squadron. And his whore is going to kill Yossarian.

ORR: Yossarian's roommate. His strange habits include putting

apples and horse chestnuts into his cheeks, installing new luxuries
such as running water into his tent, and crash-landing every
mission. Yossarian dismisses him as crazy, but one day Orr
disappears after another typical crash landing. At the end of the
book, Yossarian realizes that he had tricked everyone into thinking
that he was crazy so he could escape without being caught. He
escaped to Sweden.

THE CHAPLAIN: Anabaptist, very sick man, sensitive, Yossarian's

second good friend, he begins to lose his faith in God as the novel 
progresses, he has de ja vú many times.