MissPandaGoth
New Member
Hey, I recently did a speech on the structure
of the book, Catch-22. Feel free to tell me what you think. I got 90%
_____________________________________________________
“Today, I’ll be exploring the structure of Catch-22 written by Joseph Heller.
I’ve handed out sheets that give you an understanding of how I’ve planned out my seminar, which includes a multiple choice test that I’ll collect later on.”
As most of you already know Catch-22 is generally seen to be profound in its conception, complex in its composition and radical in its message.
In form, Catch-22 is social satire. It’s not a flag waving war adventure, but a novel using humour to discredit or ridicule aspects of our society.
Unlike other war novels, such as Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Catch-22 relies heavily on humor to convey the insanity of war, presenting the horrible meaninglessness of armed conflict through a kind of desperate absurdity rather than through graphic depictions of suffering and violence.
Although Catch-22’s structure is complex, it is also clever and unique.
Behind what appears to be merely random events lies a careful system of time sequences.
The plot of Catch-22 is disordered, meaning that the organizing principle of the novel is not chronology. Time is disjointed and episodes are placed for one of two purposes. The first of these purposes is to juxtapose two scenes in order to show their relevance to each other Regardless of their chronological order.
For example: in the beginning and middle of chapter two, Yossarian is arguing with Clevinger, but in between we are shown where Yossarian lives at a time when Clevinger “had still not returned”. The purpose of this rapid juxtaposition is to establish an ironic perspective on clevinger’s claim that war is impersonal.
Another example of this is the lifting of the first chapter out of sequence in order to establish the importance of the hospital, the friendship of Yossarian and the Chaplain and Yossarian’s mindset from the beginning.
The second criterion for the placement of episodes is the requirement that they create a graduated series of events.
For example: we are given several interrogation scenes, each more sinister than the one before. Or we see several attempts at a bomb run, each new attempt heightening the psychological impact on the men. In disjointing time in this way, the structure contributes to the content of the novel where time equal’s mortality and therefore, disjoints the lives of men in the squadron. Without this structure the presentation of the theme of déj* vu that is the sensation of having seen something before, would be impossible.
An artificial chronology of the novel’s actions can be worked out: The action really begins with Yossarian’s training in Colorado; it proceeds through his combat missions over targets like Avignon and Bologna, and the death and disappearances of his comrades; it is marked by Milo Minderbinder’s rise to power and the raising of the missions from forty to eighty; it culminates in Yossarian’s refusal to fly anymore missions, his discovery of the real meaning of Catch-22 and finally his desertion.
When one looks at the structure, recurring events come to mind that add to the impact of the novel.
In Catch-22 we find certain incidents keep recurring with various effects, four of these are:
1) Cathcart keeps putting up the missions. He uses a tragedy like the deaths of kid Sampson and McWatt as an excuse to raise the missions. He uses Nately’s love as a tool to raise the missions. They are raised to eighty as Yossarian escapes. Cathcart’s action is a constant reminder of callousness driven by personal ambition.
2) Yossarian’s signing ‘Washington Irving’ starts out as a relief from boredom. Others begin with signing the name and the matter becomes material for a full official investigation. In an absurd conclusion in Chapter 36, the Chaplain is accused of being Washington Irving. The recurring event satirizes the ineptness of the administration and is the first revelation of Yossarian’s attitude to the war.
3) Milo’s M & M Enterprises keeps coming into the book. Milo has three chapters named after him. This recurring part of the plot gives a good example of the change of tone as the book develops. The satire becomes more biting. Milo’s early actions are amusing, even to some extent admirable. We are tempted to yoke his not taking the war seriously to Yossarian’s detachment. But he loses reader sympathy late in the novel when he is seen to be as selfish and callous as the other non-combatants, as he steals life-saving equipment and allows nothing to interfere with a money-making opportunity.
4) The missions are only briefly juxtaposed with the antics at the base, sometimes mentioned only briefly at the ends of chapters. But the full horror of war weighs down the last chapters , as we see the details of Snowden’s death, Rome grow from a brothel to a fully devastated city, and La Spezia take the lives of characters we have come to know. The skillful portrayal of the various missions earlier lead to these tragic climaxes towards the novel’s end.
< Point to spiral structure>
What we have here is two examples of the spiraling structure of Catch-22.
The spiral is a psychological one based on the principle of déj* vu. This kind of structure makes it hard to tell when “now” is in catch-22. The pieces are organized into a psychological progression from the humorous to the grim. You will see a similar spiral from the comic to the tragic in any other set of references you follow.
For example, Yossarian’s hospitalizations are not simply circular, each exactly repeating the previous time. Instead they become increasingly serious, until the final times involve life threatening wounds. As well as giving us a broad sweep of a disordered world, Heller’s narrative method includes several incidents that are touched on in flashes , with eventual full explanation later in the book.
This particular illustration shows the increase of personal danger to Yossarian in missions flown.
By manipulating the points at which the different systems cross, Heller creates a structural absurdity enforcing the absurdity of character and event in the novel. Heller does not need to develop an impossible time scheme to create a sense of absurdity and confusion in his novel; he achieves this effect better by obscuring and twisting a chronological structure which is both plausible and logical.
“Now I’m just going to show you all a scene from the 1993 film of Catch-22 directed by Mike Nichols.
This particular scene is of Snowdens funeral which is featured in chapters 9, 20, 21, 24 and 25 of the novel.
This scene is a parody of the temptation scene in the garden of Eden, with Yossarian sitting naked in the tree of life and knowledge watching Snowden’s funeral while Milo, sitting next to him attired in his dark business uniform tries to tempt Yossarian with the chocolate covered cotton.
Using various themes and a unique style and structure, Heller satirizes war and its values as well as using the war setting to satirize society at large.
Heller uses a variety of literary modes: the satirical, the surrealistic, and the realistic. One of the main proofs of his literary genius is his blending and variation of these modes to achieve his unique effects. Satire is a literally manner that uses wit, irony, and sarcasm to expose and discredit human follies and vices. It is, of course, the humour that makes the bitter moral palatable.
Heller’s humour makes us drop our guard for the serious blow to follow.
Black humour, is often a tactic with good writers and becomes a major technique with Heller. It may be defined as a bitter emphasis on the absurd that makes us laugh so that we will not cry. Heller once said: “I wanted people to laugh and then look back with horror at what they were laughing at”.
of the book, Catch-22. Feel free to tell me what you think. I got 90%
_____________________________________________________
“Today, I’ll be exploring the structure of Catch-22 written by Joseph Heller.
I’ve handed out sheets that give you an understanding of how I’ve planned out my seminar, which includes a multiple choice test that I’ll collect later on.”
As most of you already know Catch-22 is generally seen to be profound in its conception, complex in its composition and radical in its message.
In form, Catch-22 is social satire. It’s not a flag waving war adventure, but a novel using humour to discredit or ridicule aspects of our society.
Unlike other war novels, such as Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Catch-22 relies heavily on humor to convey the insanity of war, presenting the horrible meaninglessness of armed conflict through a kind of desperate absurdity rather than through graphic depictions of suffering and violence.
Although Catch-22’s structure is complex, it is also clever and unique.
Behind what appears to be merely random events lies a careful system of time sequences.
The plot of Catch-22 is disordered, meaning that the organizing principle of the novel is not chronology. Time is disjointed and episodes are placed for one of two purposes. The first of these purposes is to juxtapose two scenes in order to show their relevance to each other Regardless of their chronological order.
For example: in the beginning and middle of chapter two, Yossarian is arguing with Clevinger, but in between we are shown where Yossarian lives at a time when Clevinger “had still not returned”. The purpose of this rapid juxtaposition is to establish an ironic perspective on clevinger’s claim that war is impersonal.
Another example of this is the lifting of the first chapter out of sequence in order to establish the importance of the hospital, the friendship of Yossarian and the Chaplain and Yossarian’s mindset from the beginning.
The second criterion for the placement of episodes is the requirement that they create a graduated series of events.
For example: we are given several interrogation scenes, each more sinister than the one before. Or we see several attempts at a bomb run, each new attempt heightening the psychological impact on the men. In disjointing time in this way, the structure contributes to the content of the novel where time equal’s mortality and therefore, disjoints the lives of men in the squadron. Without this structure the presentation of the theme of déj* vu that is the sensation of having seen something before, would be impossible.
An artificial chronology of the novel’s actions can be worked out: The action really begins with Yossarian’s training in Colorado; it proceeds through his combat missions over targets like Avignon and Bologna, and the death and disappearances of his comrades; it is marked by Milo Minderbinder’s rise to power and the raising of the missions from forty to eighty; it culminates in Yossarian’s refusal to fly anymore missions, his discovery of the real meaning of Catch-22 and finally his desertion.
When one looks at the structure, recurring events come to mind that add to the impact of the novel.
In Catch-22 we find certain incidents keep recurring with various effects, four of these are:
1) Cathcart keeps putting up the missions. He uses a tragedy like the deaths of kid Sampson and McWatt as an excuse to raise the missions. He uses Nately’s love as a tool to raise the missions. They are raised to eighty as Yossarian escapes. Cathcart’s action is a constant reminder of callousness driven by personal ambition.
2) Yossarian’s signing ‘Washington Irving’ starts out as a relief from boredom. Others begin with signing the name and the matter becomes material for a full official investigation. In an absurd conclusion in Chapter 36, the Chaplain is accused of being Washington Irving. The recurring event satirizes the ineptness of the administration and is the first revelation of Yossarian’s attitude to the war.
3) Milo’s M & M Enterprises keeps coming into the book. Milo has three chapters named after him. This recurring part of the plot gives a good example of the change of tone as the book develops. The satire becomes more biting. Milo’s early actions are amusing, even to some extent admirable. We are tempted to yoke his not taking the war seriously to Yossarian’s detachment. But he loses reader sympathy late in the novel when he is seen to be as selfish and callous as the other non-combatants, as he steals life-saving equipment and allows nothing to interfere with a money-making opportunity.
4) The missions are only briefly juxtaposed with the antics at the base, sometimes mentioned only briefly at the ends of chapters. But the full horror of war weighs down the last chapters , as we see the details of Snowden’s death, Rome grow from a brothel to a fully devastated city, and La Spezia take the lives of characters we have come to know. The skillful portrayal of the various missions earlier lead to these tragic climaxes towards the novel’s end.
< Point to spiral structure>
What we have here is two examples of the spiraling structure of Catch-22.
The spiral is a psychological one based on the principle of déj* vu. This kind of structure makes it hard to tell when “now” is in catch-22. The pieces are organized into a psychological progression from the humorous to the grim. You will see a similar spiral from the comic to the tragic in any other set of references you follow.
For example, Yossarian’s hospitalizations are not simply circular, each exactly repeating the previous time. Instead they become increasingly serious, until the final times involve life threatening wounds. As well as giving us a broad sweep of a disordered world, Heller’s narrative method includes several incidents that are touched on in flashes , with eventual full explanation later in the book.
This particular illustration shows the increase of personal danger to Yossarian in missions flown.
By manipulating the points at which the different systems cross, Heller creates a structural absurdity enforcing the absurdity of character and event in the novel. Heller does not need to develop an impossible time scheme to create a sense of absurdity and confusion in his novel; he achieves this effect better by obscuring and twisting a chronological structure which is both plausible and logical.
“Now I’m just going to show you all a scene from the 1993 film of Catch-22 directed by Mike Nichols.
This particular scene is of Snowdens funeral which is featured in chapters 9, 20, 21, 24 and 25 of the novel.
This scene is a parody of the temptation scene in the garden of Eden, with Yossarian sitting naked in the tree of life and knowledge watching Snowden’s funeral while Milo, sitting next to him attired in his dark business uniform tries to tempt Yossarian with the chocolate covered cotton.
Using various themes and a unique style and structure, Heller satirizes war and its values as well as using the war setting to satirize society at large.
Heller uses a variety of literary modes: the satirical, the surrealistic, and the realistic. One of the main proofs of his literary genius is his blending and variation of these modes to achieve his unique effects. Satire is a literally manner that uses wit, irony, and sarcasm to expose and discredit human follies and vices. It is, of course, the humour that makes the bitter moral palatable.
Heller’s humour makes us drop our guard for the serious blow to follow.
Black humour, is often a tactic with good writers and becomes a major technique with Heller. It may be defined as a bitter emphasis on the absurd that makes us laugh so that we will not cry. Heller once said: “I wanted people to laugh and then look back with horror at what they were laughing at”.