【文章內(nèi)容簡介】 to manipulate people39。s lives in the name of reason or morality. The author of this paper just takes Heller’s Catch22 and something wrong as examples.In Catch22, the author discarded the traditional realism, made whole works without a plete plot development clue. There was not a prominent character image. Instead, it is full of chaos, noisy, crazy atmosphere. But the authors also stressed a serious absurd, describing the whole American society from its internal dirty, corruption, and fall, especially those bureaucrats. Joseph Heller’s second novel, Something Wrong, written in 1974, described a pany staff’s mental anguish. It reflects the psychological state of American middle class. Something Wrong focused on writing external forces causing the person’s oppression and corrosion. Catch22 mainly told the characters’ inner spiritual life. The author in this novel made use of jokes to show that there was really something wrong with the society. He also satirized the reality and politics through absurd and deforming description. Heller’s Catch22
The Background of Catch22 After WWII, America experienced a period of unprecedented economic boom. In 1950s, America became the big brother of the capitalism world. The Cold War broke out between America and Soviet Union. With the stronger of Soviet Union, many American began be afraid of munism. They thought that the lives of American would be in danger. The republican from Wisconsin Joseph R McCarthy speak out the fear of the American. McCarthyism made the young be resentful and limited the development of literature. Besides, exhausting all resources to build up American military power aroused the antiwar sentiment. Under such political circumstances, Catch22 came out to express the author’s feeling to a chaotic America.At the beginning of 20thcentury, the famous new humanism critic More found that there was a kind of “the power of blackness” in American literature. O. Henry made use of “tearful humor” to tell the miserable life of ordinary people. Mark Twain used a kind of humor, which described bleeding with pleasure and made jokes on corpse. This kind of humor was very close to black humor literature created by Mark Twain has significant effects on the following writers. With the time passing, the humor literature was developed by leaps and bounds. Some scholars pointed out that ridicule was one of the characters in 20th century literature. In 1960s, black humor became prevalent. It was a new period of humor after Mark Twain. Just at that time, Joseph Heller began to write his Catch22. And after it was published, he became the representative writer of this period.There are social factors for Joseph Heller’s Catch22. Although the WWII ended in 1945, it was difficult for people to get rid of the fear and unpeaceful feelings caused by war. The crime of Nazi and the using of atom all left a very deep impression on people. Because of the using of atom, people doubted whether technology benefit human or not. In 1950s, the success of superatomatic experiments and artificial satellite all made people feel pollution made people unpeaceful. In 1960s, population explosion and deteriorated environment pollution made people feel ideological confusion. Democracy, individual pursuit religious belief all did not exist. Traditional moral beliefs and value system lost their effects. The people in modern society lost connect with history and were tapped in lone and alienation. Gist of the NovelCatch22 is a satirical, historical novel of Joseph Heller. It was set during the later stages of World War II from 1944 onwards, which is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the twentieth century. It has a distinctive nonchronological style where events are described from different characters’ points of view and out of sequence so that the time line develops along with the plot.Joseph Heller wrote the novel without a plete plot. There are 42 chapters and every chapter tells a story of one person. The novel follows Yossarian, a . Army Air Forces B25 bombardier, and a number of other characters. Most events occur while the airmen of the fictional 256th squadron are based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea west of Italy. During the WWII, the protagonist Yossarian lived in a strange and unusual world, where everyone placed the war in the center. As a bombardier of an . Army Air Forces, he was mitted to war out of justice. Because of his achievements in war, he was promoted to captain. However, after he witnessed a lot of hypocritical, absurd, crazy and cruel phenomena, Yossarian became cynical and antipathetic to war. He wanted neither to be promoted nor to contribute. He just wanted to go home after his panions were killed one after another. So he devised multiple strategies to avoid bat missions, but the military bureaucracy is always able to use the catch22 to make him stay. Gradually, Yossarian came to realize that catch22 did not actually exist, but because the powers that claimed it does, and the world believes it does. At last, he had to escape to Sweden.The author of this paper thinks that although many events in the book are repeatedly described, it is from different points of view. In that way the reader learns more about each event from each point of view, with the new information often pleting a joke, the punch line of it was told several chapters previously. The novel often describes events out of sequence, but events are referred to as if the reader is already familiar with them, so that the reader must ultimately piece together a timeline of events. Chapter IV Black Humor in Catch22
The Characters in this NovelThe writer directly exposes every real aspect of American bureaucracy society after WWII by depicting those people in single of multiple dimensions. Being the representative of the literature of black humor, the work contains tremendous styles of utterances and behaviors of v