Ap Literary Analysis of Catch-22 Essay Example

The Self-Contained Hell That Is War Laughing in the face of war and death, literally, is one of the things that make the novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller such an intriguing and original story. It was written in 1961, a time when, due to the fighting of the Second World War, all war novels were written with a dark and dreary tone, while still trying to continue the pre-conceived romantic notions about war. However, Joseph Heller strips away all of the romantic pretense, and pulling heavily on his own Air Force experience during WWII, presents war in its most raw, un-censored version. It takes away thoughts of being the amazing hero, and winning medals, and replaces them with the screwed up, bureaucratic way that we fight wars. It shows the true paradoxes that arise, and shows the violence of war, in its most un-adulterated form. This book came right after WWII, a war that most American citizens saw as a just and needed war, and shocked all who read it with the truth about war. Then, as if to prove the literary genius of the author, the Vietnam War comes along. It then turns out that the novel Catch-22 was almost prophetic about the war. Almost the entire novel is shown through the eyes of the main character, Captain John Yossarian. He is an Assyrian, who is completely paranoid and always trying to convince people that there are other people out there who are doing their best to make sure he doesn’t return from each mission he flies. He then decides to make it his personal mission to return alive from every flight. Throughout the entire story, the main theme or subject is the craziness of war, and how it is not romantic as it has been previously portrayed, but actually hellish and dangerous. One of the most interesting parts about the novel is the way in which it is organized. The book has 42 chapters, each consisting of about 8 to 10 pages, and each telling a different story. While that alone, obviously, does not make the novel unique, the fact that the