Joseph Heller's "Catch-22"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the title of Heller's novel refers to the contradictions of war itself and inherent contradiction of this code, "Catch-22,' a code of military ethics stating that one does not have to fight if one is crazy, but one is not be crazy if one does not want to fight, suggesting that it is insane to want to die fighting a war. The author applies this code to contemporary military terms, saying that a similar Catch-22 is evident in the rhetoric of leaders who justify the need to stay in Iraq to sustain the peace, even while the American military presence creates more conflict. This paper relates that, in war, the military deprives a person of his or her private language and life, creating its own system of values; in this way, the military is similar to many other spheres of society, which create insular cultures of their own, locking in participants who, once entrapped within a particular system, cannot escape.

From the Paper:

"Yoassarin, the paranoid hero of the novel desires to leave service, especially after dealing with the death of one of the men of his unit. He too, he finds, is subject to the Catch-22 clause that to be excused from military duty by reason of insanity, one must be insane enough to want to fight on, rather than to live and opt out of armed conflict. Thus, the central problem of the novel is not only the insanity of war, but also how to opt out of a system that demands a clear yes or no--either one must validate the war and insanely agree to armed combat to be excused, or one must validate the war by continuing to fight on, while sanely refusing and saying that war is death, thereby proving one's own sanity and proving one's fitness to fight."

More papers on Joseph Heller's "Catch-22":

• Analytical Essay # 146314 : "Joseph Heller's "Catch 22"
• Analytical Essay # 136102 : "Joseph Heller's "Catch 22"
• Book Review # 1954 : "Catch-22: An Anti-War Novel"
• Analytical Essay # 51650 : "Fragmentation in "Catch-22"

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