The Brief Analysis on Black Humor in Catch-22
Name：刘彩君    Student Number：09157097
Abstract
Joseph Heller is one of the most prominent American writers in the 20th Century. As soon as the publication of his masterpiece, Catch-22, Heller has attracted attention from all over the world and his reputation as a talented American writers was also immediately established. Catch-22 now is universally acknowledged as one of the typical representative books of black humor. Heller makes a wonderful deduction of black humor with the fresh subject and unique style; he creates many absurd images in a symbolic way. Many dialogues, characters’ individualities and even the chronological structure are disorder, ridiculous and paradoxical. The author of the thesis paper mainly demonstrates the application of black humor in Catch-22 through four aspects: the portrayal of main characters, the arrangement of the chronological structure, the motifs of the novel and the features of language.
The thesis is structured as follows:
Chapter One takes a brief review of Joseph Heller and his Catch-22, presenting the literature review about the novel in recent years and the thesis statement. Chapter Two gives a general explanation of the black humor. Chapter Three deals with the black humor reflected in Catch-22. Chapter Four is the conclusion. In this part, the author of the thesis concludes the typical use of black humor and its function that help to understand theme and Heller’s purpose of writing this novel.
Key words: black humor, Catch-22, paradoxical law, absurdity
Ⅰ. Introduction
1.1 Joseph Heller and Catch-22
Joseph Heller (1923-1999) is an American novelists, playwright and short story writer. As one of the most prominent American contemporary novelists, his best-known novel, Catch-22, is recognized as a major work of the postwar period and remains his most fam
ous and acclaimed work. Because his marvelous use of black humor and satire in his literary creation, Heller becomes one of the representatives of black humor- a indispensable literary trend which thrived in the United States in 1960s. He was born in Brooklyn in 1923. In 1942, Heller enlisted in the Army Air Corps. In 1944, his cadet training completed and he was dispatched to Corsica, cohere he served as a wing bombardier on sixty combat missions until he got honorably discharged. Hence, his military experiences are simultaneously reflected in Catch-22. After the withdrawal from the World War Ⅱ, he enjoyed a long career as a writer and a teacher. Heller wrote Catch-22 while working at a New York City marketing firm producing ad copy. Apart from Catch-22, his best-selling books include Something Happened, Good as Gold, Picture This, God knows and Closing Time.
Catch-22 is Joseph Heller’s masterpiece. The novel draws heavily on his Air Force experience and presents a war story that is hilarious, grotesque, cynical, and stirring. Although it generated a great deal of controversy on its initial publication in 1961, as time goes by, Catch-22 has become one of the defining novels of the twentieth century. The no
vel reflects the ultimate absurdity of modern American society through depiction of an utterly unsentimental vision of war that happened on the island of Pianosa, near the Italian cost in the Mediterranean Sea. “Stripping all romantic pretenses away from combat, replacing visions of glory and honor with a kind of nightmarish comedy of violence, bureaucracy, and paradoxical madness”(Miller&Phillips 2). In the novel, Heller represents us a vivid image of anti-hero, Yossarian, whose only purpose in life is “struggling to avoid being overwhelmed by such institutions” (Chen 17). As a lead bombardier, Yossarian just has one goal: to survive. Yet, abusing the rule of Catch-22, the new commander, Colonel Cathcart keeps raising the number of missions required in order to fulfill his personal promotion. Yossarian has agony that his life is in constant danger though on fault of his own. No one but Yossarian seems to realize that there is a war going on; everyone thinks he is crazy when he insists that millions of people are trying to kill him. Yossarian’s story forms the core of the novel, so most events are refracted through his point of view. In his eyes, the so-called glory and patriotism are nothing but the excuses for those bureaucrats to fulfill their own lusts. The novel makes a
close as Yossarian, continually troubled by Snowden’s death, refuses to fly any more missions. He get a chance to be released and sent home with an honorable discharge, while has to accept one condition providing by Colonel Cathcart: Yossarian must promise to praise his commanding policy, which requires all soldiers to fly eighty missions. However, Yossarian is reluctant to endanger the lives of other innocent men. At the end of whole story, he decides to desert the army and flee to neutral Sweden. In this way, Yossarian escapes from the dehumanizing cold machinery of the military, rejects the rule of Catch-22 and win back his future for controlling his own destiny.
1.2. Literature review
After the novel’s birth in 1961, different judgments constantly emerged. Critics tended either to adore it or despise it. Some people argue that“Heller’s social satire is unpatriotic, the sexual references are offensive; its style is repetitious; its structure is incoherent and its characters are unbelievable” (qtd. in Nagel 5). On the contrary, the others compliment that Catch-22 is “the greatest satirical work in English since Erewhon” (Kiley 3). It seems t
hat those who hated it did so for the same reasons as the critics who loved it. Although it has received numerous criticisms in the early period of its publication, finally, it reaps overwhelming admiration from most of the critics such as Robert Brustein, Brian Way, Norman Podhoretz, etc. Unlike other anti-romantic war novels, such as Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet in 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 vivid depictions of suffering and violence. “The absurdism of Catch-22 comes from a modern senselessness and is a direct reaction to contemporary history and institutions.” Despite its World WarⅡ setting, Catch-22 is often recognized as a signature novel of the 1960s to 1970s. During those decades that American youth truly began to question authority and Heller’s novel fitted in exactly with the spirit of revolution. In fact, Heller “incorporates the conventions of the humorous war novel, traditional satire, and social protest into the vast architecture of Catch-22” to mock the personal relationships in bureaucratic authority. His anti-traditional writing skills achieve him fame as one of the greatest writer of black humor. The research of Joseph H
eller and his Catch-22 in China was much later than that in America. Those studies are chiefly interpreted from two perspectives: the perspective of black humor and the perspective of postmodernism. Obviously, the former takes the priority. For instance, in Wang Ling’s monograph, A Study of the American Black Humor Fiction, she has discussed the effects of black humor in Catch-22. Moreover, there are many articles involve in this aspect, such as Wang Guoming’s “On Black Humor Literature”, Liu Jie’s “Black Humor and Joseph Heller” and Hu Hailan’s “An Absurd Soul in An Absurd World”, etc. It tells that whether overseas or domestic, the researches on Catch-22 was never dismissed and will be permanent
1.3. Thesis statement
Actually, Catch-22, the title itself, is the best the best evidence of black humor. It is defined in various ways throughout the novel. In short, Catch-22 is any paradoxical, circular reasoning that catches its victim in its illogic and serves those who have made the law. Besides the ridiculous law as the same as the novel’s title, the confusing chronologic
al order and the crazy humanity are both utilized by Heller in order to magnify the glamour of black humor. Therefore, on the basis of referring to researches and combining the relevant theories of black humor, this paper will take this opportunity to make a brief analysis about the black humor reflected in Catch-22. Through analyzing on its main character, theme, structure and language, prove that Heller’s Catch-22 gets more impressive and immortal effect from black humor rather than ordinary skills.

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