The Ubiquitous Absurdity

Joseph Heller's Catch-22~1 is a serious and ironic novel. It shows a systematic society in organized chaos. The society simply obeys the grotesque logic of "Catch-22". Through the symbol of "Catch-22", we can know the nature of war, the American society and its bureaucracy's absurdity, grotesqueness and insanity.The great success of Catch-22 lies in representing a rich reservoir of insight on many of the major issues of the novel. It has been proved out that the novel's meaning is not confined to the issues of war, and that the theme of Catch-22 is the absurdity, irrationality and nightmare of a disordered universe, a universe in which fantasy and the grotesque are indistinguishable. Catch-22 goes beyond just capturing the form of absurdity; it moves toward a metaphysical statement about reality and truth in the contemporary world and suggests a means for living in this world.What makes Heller's novel unique among other contemporary novels is the extent and complexities of techniques. The range and subtlety of the devices allow him to show absurdity through images and forms of absurdity, through the language and tone of absurdity. His use of Black Humor, repetition and word game and so on creates an overpowering effect and further deepens this novel's themes.The absurd vision of life Heller presents has within it a statement of hope. Catch-22 is a statement about contemporary man's relationship to the world he inhabits. It presents a world in which the loss of values, the sense of alienation, and the failure of meaningful communication are accepted conditions. Heller's message is that man can live in an absurd world by wiping the glaze of illusion from his eyes and seeing clearly, by maintaining his own moral integrity, his own identity, his own honor, and his own freedom.Although Catch-22 has attracted far more critical commentary than any of Heller's other works, there is still no general agreement about such basic issues as its structure and it is still essential to demonstrate that novel's complexities and also its...