The Eternal City

A "classic" text tends to be extremely restricted in its research scope for its canonized interpretations. With seven years' labor, Joseph Heller dedicated his Cach-22 in 1961, which initiated and was esteemed as the classic of "black humor". However, the term "black humor" was originally called "Romantic grotesque", a variety of carnival humor in the early 19th century. To get a deeper understanding of Catch-22, this paper goes back to its source—carnival humor, and holds that it should be interpreted in its own rights.The paper is divided into four chapters. Chapter One unveils the incomprehensive research situation in the present literary circle through an overall review of the study on Catch-22 both home and abroad.Chapter Two elaborates the nature, manifestations, philosophical foundation as well as the historical development of carnival humor in Bakhtin's theoretical system, and introduces the three main features of carnival humor—unofficial folk truth, relativity of freedom and carnival Janus.Chapter Three, from the perspective of carnival humor, discloses the carnival spirit within the text Catch-22 and claims that, in the chapters about the city of Rome, humor loses its "blackness"; instead, it assumes the features of "humor" in Bakhtin's carnival system, among which unofficial folk truth, relativity of freedom and carnival Janus are selected to interpret respectively the establishment, extinction of carnival Utopia in Rome and its resurrection in Sweden.First, unofficial folk truth breaks all the restrictions in the official world, striving to realize equality and carnival spirit among all human beings. In Rome, it is realized through three ways—the elevation of people from the low class, the centralization of the marginalized people, and the degeneration of people from the upper class.Second, carnival humor exists on the borderline between the serious official world and the carnival folk world, determined by the former in both space and time. And the freedom it promises is rather limited and relative. In such a situation, destructive elements have stolen into the carnival Utopia since the day it was born. Thus due to that crowning and uncrowning at the same time, Rome falls into ruins overnight.Last, as the essence of carnival humor, carnival Janus transforms death into the irresistible power of regeneration, and guarantees the eternal operation of life together with birth. Therefore, the "death" of carnival Utopia in Rome brings about not only the resurrection of Yossarian the hero, but also its own establishment in Sweden. According to Bakhtin, thousands of years ago, Rome was the birthplace of carnival festival, while now in Catch-22, Rome again becomes a carnival Utopia, a city of freedom, hope and joy.Chapter Four, after giving a brief summary of the analyses above, draws a conclusion that, focusing on the game of subversion, extinction and resurrection, carnival humor transfers Rome into a city of eternity, in which the absurdity, despair and loneliness dominating the novel are shattered into pieces. As a result, the title, the ending and Yossarian the hero of the novel get a new interpretation. The year 1961 saw the publication of Catch-22, and signified not only the resurrection of carnival humor, the second cultural tradition of human civilization, in the "spiritual wasteland" of the modern western society, but also its short "renaissance" in splendor, disclosing the eternity of carnival humor.Carnival humor, seeking hope from "laughter in despair" and finding amiability in "frantic degeneration", provides a brand new perspective to analyze novels of "black humor". And Catch-22 can be used as a good case study to prove its significance to the modern world, for it can bring some hints to the reexamination of the postwar spiritual state in the West.