The Absurd World, The Rebellious Hero

After World War II, the Western world has developed quickly in cultivating the material civilization, however, there are also crises lurking on every side in people's spiritual life. Confronted with World War II, Cold War, and McCarthy Time, many Americans feel perplexed at the life and the future, and they begin to believe that the world is absurd. Against this social background, Joseph Heller produced the novel Catch-22, a novel that exposes and satirizes the contemporary American society trenchantly.The novel finds the theoretical support in French philosopher Camus's philosophy of the absurd, which is also prevailing after World War II. Camus believes that people are living in a meaningless world without hope, but they always hope their life will be meaningful and valuable. And absurdity appears in such a contradiction. Camus advocates that people needn't escape, but they should realize the absurdity and rebel against it. To live as long as possible is the best way to rebel.The present thesis attempts to analyze Heller's Catch-22 by using Camus's philosophy of the absurd. In the novel, Heller constructs an absurd world, where the soldiers are controlled by Catch-22, a non-existing rule; the officers only care about their fame and wealth, without being aware of the absurdity of the world; and the only sane person is Yossarian, who always refuses to receive missions or tries his best to survive in the battles. Actually, at the beginning Yossarian realizes the absurdity of the world he is living in. He knows that the life is basically a ludicrous tragedy, and only "living" itself should be the target of life. This is just Camus's "rebelling against the absurdity". At the end of the novel, Orr's escape to Switzerland and chaplain's support to Yossarian show that the individual rebellion becomes the collective one — the philosophical idea expressed in Camus's The Plague. As the heroes of rebellion, Yossarian and Orr's experiences are interpretations of Camus's philosophy. The combination of the two is of great realistic significance to the people who have been suffering from pains brought about by the absurdity in the modern world.