Satire In Joseph Heller's Catch 22
Authorial Biography
Joseph Heller is an American author who was born in 1923 and died in 1999. Heller went on to write several plays and novels with varying levels of success. His works included the renowned novel Catch-22. Heller was born on May the first during the year 1923 in Brooklyn, New York (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica). Heller was born to first generation Russian-Jewish immigrants Isaac and Lena Heller who came to the United States in 1913 (Najarian). His father worked as a bakery truck driver while his mother stayed at home (Peek). He also had two older half siblings named Sylvia, who was seven years older than Joseph, and Lee, who was fourteen years older than Joseph (Peek). Joseph Heller’s father Isaac died
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Catch-22 turns the seriousness and gruesomeness of war into a comedy following the protagonist of the novel. In his novel Heller describes the series of impossible events that the protagonist Yossarian must endure to his survival from his enemies both from outside and from within. The novel revolves around these various plights on Yossarian’s airbase, or better known in this novel as Catch-22s, that he must find a way out of at all costs if he is to survive the …show more content…
The rising action in the story is composed of Yossarian slowly believing that he may never get the chance to return home without getting killed.
Style: Heller uses a very unique style with the way he wrote Catch-22, as well as some of his other novels, which is partly the reason why it found such great success. In the novel Heller makes heavy use of sarcasm, irony, and just general absurdity to help pronounce the satirical elements in his work in a way that is uniquely his own.
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Theme:
" Joseph Heller." 2012. FamousAuthors.org 27 April, .
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. "Joseph Heller." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 23 Oct. 2012. Web. 24 Apr. 2017. .
Peek, C.A. "Catch-22." Joseph Heller Biography. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2017. .
Najarian, Jennifer. "Heller, Joseph." Heller, Joseph. Penn State University, 2005. Web. 22 Apr. 2017.
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