An Analysis Of Catch-22 From The Perspective Of Defamiliarization Theory

Catch-22 is the first novel written by contemporary American writer, Joseph Heller, the initiator of American Black Humor. Through the depiction of the crazy world of an American Air Force base on the island Pianosa off the Italian coast during World War II, the novel reflects the depth of the absurdity of modern American society. Being the representative work of American Black Humor, Catch-22 enables readers to explore the virtual world created by Joseph Heller and scholars to study its peculiar content and techniques of writing.Artistically, until now most scholars have focused their studies on Catch-22's absurdity, existential elements, the relationship between the textual world and American society and so on. Using the"defamiliarization theory"initiated by Russian Formalism, this thesis is intended an analysis of the novel in terms of its language, characters, and its narrative techniques. The novel's great success mainly attributes to the employment of the"defamiliarization techniques". By disrupting the modes of ordinary linguistic discourse, this novel"makes strange"the world of common perception and renews the reader's lost capacity for fresh sensation. In other words, Catch-22 is a novel which dafamiliarizes things which are habitual or insensitive to the readers and therefore produces strange effect or fresh feel on the part of the readers. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the novel from a new point of view so that the darkness of the American society and the cruelty of the war could be expose...