信阳师范学院华锐学院本科毕业论文（设计）
专业英语
年级 2010 级
姓名
论文（设计）题目The Analysis of the Black Humour in Catch-22
指导教师职称讲师
2014 年 4月 17日
Contents
Abstract (1)
Key words (1)
1. Introduction to Joseph Heller (1)
1.1 Heller’s Life (2)
1.2 Heller’s Works and Writing Style (2)
2. Introduction to Black Humour (3)
3. The Background of Catch-22 (5)
4. Analysis of Black Humor in Catch-22 (6)
4.1The Portrayal of Main Characters (6)
4.2The Arrangement of the Structure (8)
4.3 The Themes of the N ovel (10)
4.4The Features of Language (11)
5. Conclusion (12)
Bibliography (13)
The analysis of the Back Humour in Catch-22
Name: Xu Chengyan No.:20100201733
English Major Foreign Languages Department
Supervisor: Li Jiangtao Title: Instructor
Abstract: This paper focuses on the analysis of black humour in Catch-22, which is one of the most representative books of black humour. First, it introduces the author of Catch-22, including Joseph Heller’s life and his work and working style. Then, it makes a introduction to black humour and the Background of Catch-22. Finally, this paper mainly analyzes black humour in Catch-22 from four aspects, th e portrayal of main characters, the arrangement of the structure, the themes of the novel, the features of language. In all, the most important role of this paper is having a better understanding of the novel catch-22 for readers.
Key words: black humour; Catch-22; paradoxical; absurd
摘要：本文着重分析小说《第二十二条军规》中的黑色幽默，这是一本对黑色幽默最具有代表性的书。本文首先介绍小说《第二十二条军规》的作者，从作者的一生和他的作品以及作品风格进行介绍。然后，介绍一下黑色幽默和小说《第二十二条军规》的写作背景。最后，从四方面对小说中的黑色幽默进行分析：人物刻画，结构布置，小说的主题，语言特点。总之，写这篇论文最主要的目的是让读者对小说《第二十二条军规》有一个更好的了解。
关键词：黑色幽默；第二十二条军规；矛盾；荒诞
1. Introduction to Joseph Heller
1.1 Heller’s Life
Joseph Heller (1923-1999) was born in Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York on May 1, 1923. He is the son of poor Jewish parents from Russia. He died of a heart attack at the age of 76 years old at his home in East Hampton, on Long Island, in December 1999.
Even as a child, he loved to write; as a teenager, he wrote a story about the Russian invasion of Finland and sent it to New York Daily News, which rejected it. His works were first published in 1948, when the Atlantic ran one of his short stories. That first story nearly wo n the ―Atlantic First." In 1953, he began to write his Catch-22 and it was published in 1961. Shortly after Catch-22 was published, Heller thought of an idea for his next novel, which would become Something Happened. After that, he became a professional writer and kept on writing until the completion of his last novel, Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man.
Reality is the setting of literature. Heller’s life experience affected his writing career. He was born into a Jewish family. Because of racial persecution in Russia, his family immigrated to America in 1913. When he was young, his family was very poor. In 1942, at the age of 19, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. Two years later, he was sent to Italian Front as a bombardier. Yossarian, the main character in Catch-22is similar to him in many aspects. After the war, Heller studied English at the University of Southern California and New York University. During that period, he began to write short stories. He was once suffered from gullian-barre syndrome. His illness and recovery are recounted at great length in the autobiographical No Laughing Matter (Heller 1986). In 1998, he released a memoir, Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here, in which he relived his childhood as the son of a deliveryman and offered some details about the inspirations for Catch-22.
1.2 Heller’s Works and Writing Style
Joseph Heller began his writing career as the author of short stories but won immediate acclaim with Catch-22 (1961; film, 1970). A protest novel underscored with black humor, Catch-22 satirizes the horrors of war and the power of modern society, especially bureaucratic institutions, to destroy the human spirit. Heller's second novel, Something Happened (1974), an expose of the capacity of the business world to crush the individual, is a pessimistic statement about the effects of prosperity on the human condition. We Bombed in New Haven, a play produced on Broadway in 1967, is a tragicomedy similar in theme and mood to Catch-22. Good as Gold (1979)
involves a humorous portrayal of Jewish family life and a satire of national politics, including attacks on real people such as Henry Kissinger. God Knows (1984) is a humorous retelling and analysis of the biblical account of King David. Among his later works are the novels Poetics (1987) and Picture This (1988) Closing Time (1994) Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man (2000). No Laughing Matter (1986) is a chronicle of Heller's recovery from Guillain-Barre syndrome, which contains alternating chapters by Heller and his good friend Speed V ogel. The book reveals the assistance and companionship Heller received during this period from a number of his prominent friends—Mel Brooks, Mario Puzo, Dustin Hoffman and George Mandel among them.
Heller's works are characterized by a satirical sense of the absurd, speaking out against the military-industrial complex and those organized institutions which seem to manipulate people's lives in the name of reason or morality. The author of this paper just takes Heller’s Catch-22 and something wrong as examples.
In Catch-22,the author discarded the traditional realism, made whole works without a complete plot development clue. There was not a prominent character image. Instead, it is full of chaos, noisy, crazy atmosphere. But the authors also stressed a "serious absurd", describing the whole American society from its internal dirty, corruption, and fall, especially those bureaucrats. Joseph Heller’s second novel, Something Wrong,written in 1974, described a company staff’s mental anguish. It reflects the psychological state of American middle class. Something Wrong focused on writing external forces causing the person’s oppression and corrosion. Catch-22 mainly told the characters’ inner spiritual life. The author in this novel made use of jokes to show that there was really something wrong with the society. He also satirized the reality and politics through absurd and deforming description.
2. Introduction to Black Humour
Black humor, which comes from a name of a book written by Bruce Jay Friedman, is an important literary term of America in 1960’s, and it refers primarily to a kind of bitter and often outrageous satire. Black humor can be defined as a combination of humor with resentment, gloom, anger and despair. It is a type of modern humor
caused by anger. It combines absurdity with humor often describing horrible or sad events in language normally associated with pleasant or light-hearted occasions. Writers intend to provoke readers’ response to the blackness of modern life as laughter, or, laughing in face of a tragedy. They generally do not laugh at their characters; in fact, they take them seriously. ―But if they do laugh at some of them at times, it is because they feel amused at their attempt to try to create order in their disordered and absurd world.‖ What occurs often is a sense of grief and pain coming through the laughter, a feeling of frustration and being bottled up. Therefore, black humor can be considered as the death humor out of despair and laughter out of tears.
Theoretically, black humor was chiefly influenced by French philosopher and Sartre’s existentialism and Freudian theory of psychology. Writers deny the possibility of positive individual action by choosing a more pessimistic method in order to reflect the objectivity of life, the loss of faith and the deviation of humanity. Different from traditional literature creation, which trusts that goodness always triumphs over evilness, black humor uses a humorous tone with desperation to reveal the misery of reality. In such novels, ordinary characters or situations are usually exaggerated far beyond the limits of normal satire. The powerlessness of being manipulated by unjust fate makes characters laugh at themselves. Feeling ―humor‖ from ―blackness‖ and challenging ―blackness‖ with ―humor‖, these are the essence of black humor, and how those writers treat their world of fear, neurosis and absurdity.
In contemporary literary criticism, black humor is a term applies to a large group of American novels beginning in the 1950s. Although the writers of black humor did not intentionally form a school of literary movement, in their novels, there is a common core which is directed against hypocrisy, racial prejudice, war, terrorism, and the dehumanization of individuals by the modern society. In conclusion, the research of black humor literature not only takes great effects on understanding Catch-22, but also has importance on literature studies and social critics.
The author of this paper thinks that black humor as one of the American literature genres must have its origin. Looking back into the history, it is not difficult to find that there are two aspects of reasons for the appearance of black humor. First
of all, the war trauma and social disturbance make people have a foreboding of the end of the world. In 1960s, the WWII has just finished, but the effects of the war lasted for many years. All facts in American disclosed the lies of so-called justice and patriotism resulting in shaking people’s belief in God, humanitarianism and reason. In addition, the lopsided development of technology caused the lo ss of personality. An increasing number of people were stressed out materially and spiritually. Under that circumstance, black humor came out as a necessary method to express people’s inner feelings.
3. The Background of Catch-22
After WWII, America experienced a period of unprecedented economic boom. In 1950s, America became the big brother of the capitalism world. The Cold War broke out between America and Soviet Union. With the stronger of Soviet Union, many American began be afraid of communism. They thought that the lives of American would be in danger. The republican from Wisconsin Joseph R McCarthy speak out the fear of the American. McCarthyism made the young be resentful and limited the development of literature. Besides, exhausting all resources to build up American military power aroused the anti-war sentiment. Under such political circumstances, Catch-22came out to express the author’s feeling to a chaotic America.
At the beginning of 20th-century, the famous new humanism critic More found that there was a kind of ―the power of blackness‖ in American literature. O. Henry made use of ―tearful humor‖ to tell the miserable life of ordinary people. Mark Twain used a kind of humor, which described bleeding with pleasure and made jokes on corpse. This kind of humor was very close to black humor literature created by Mark Twain has significant effects on the following writers. With the time passing, the humor literature was developed by leaps and bounds. Some scholars pointed out that ridicule was one of the characters in 20-th century literature. In 1960s, black humor became prevalent. It was a new period of humor after Mark Twain. Just at that time, Joseph Heller began to write his Catch-22. And after it was published, he became the representative writer of this period.
There are social factors for Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Although the WWII ended
in 1945, it was difficult for people to get rid of the fear and unpeaceful feelings caused by war. The crime of Nazi and the using of atom all left a very deep impression on people. Because of the using of atom, people doubted whether technology benefit human or not. In 1950s, the success of superatomatic experiments and artificial satellite all made people feel pollution made people unpeaceful. In 1960s, population explosion and deteriorated environment pollution made people feel ideological confusion. Democracy, individual pursuit religious belief all did not exist. Traditional moral beliefs and value system lost their effects. The people in modern society lost connect with history and were tapped in lone and alienation.
4. Analysis of Black Humour in Catch-22
4.1The Portrayal of Main Characters
The writer depicts those people in single of multiple dimensions to directly exposes every real aspect of American bureaucracy society after WWII . Being the representative of the literature of black humor, the work contains tremendous styles of utterances and behaviors of various persons which circle the principle of ―catch-22‖ .Yossarian who is the protagonist in Catch-22is a typical anti-heroic character of black humor. Yossarian had a lot of heroic characteristics, for example, he was very smart and knew the world literature very well. Therefore, he was familiar with various classical heroic characters. He was not like Henry who is having too many fancies. In the Air Force Training, Clevinger thought Scheisskoph really need suggestions when he asked for advices, while Yossarian knew that was not true. At the same time, Yossarian was admired and respected by others. Without his support, Dobbs’s plan of assassinating Colonel Cathcart was failed. What is more, the capitalists Milo admired Yossarian very much, for instance, he always asked Yossarian for advices to run his business.
Most of his behaviors are regarded as immoral and coward, for example, he would pretend to be ill and then be sent to the hospital every time when he was afraid of the war or his friends have been killed. He tried many ways to be proved that he is
a maniac so that he can be exempted from flying any mission.
But In many aspects, Yossarian always lived a moral life. He refused to be a hero when he knew that it was just a transaction, which was designed by the bureaucrat Colonel Cathcart to conceal his illegal behaviors; he would not have a relationship with the women he did not love. In fact, Yossarian can be regarded as a hero to some extent. He was opposed to the corruption among soldiers. Even nowadays, very few people have the courage to do like that. Yossarian rejected to accept ―catch-22‖ and wanted to escape from the army, which were not only regarded as the demonstration of his cowardice but also reflected he was a hero. In conclusion, Yossarian is the representative of the common in the society, whose destiny is dominated by others. The difference is Yossarian can not stand that his life is in other people’s hands.
Everyone in this novel is very special. They represent the attitudes of this system. The canteen minder Milo is a calculating entrepreneur. He symbolized the international monopoly. He engaged in speculation in the name of food purchasing. He even established a multinational corporation in this way. He smuggled goods through planes and even employed the enemy’s pla nes to transport for his company. What was more ridiculous is that he bombed his own airfield when the enemy-Germans offered him an extra 6%. In order to cut the costs, he let the solider eat chocolates with cotton inside. However, such a capitalist who ig nored the soldiers’ lives, became an international celebrity. He even became the may of many European cities and the vice governor of Malta.
Colonel Cathcart and Scheisskoph signify the bureaucratic group. Colonel Cathcart, who kept raising the number of missions, was a cold, ambitious commander. Just because he wanted to be the general and be appreciated by the senior officer, he kept raising the number of missions neglecting the lives of the soldiers. At last he tried to make a dirty deal with Yossarian to conceal his illegal behaviors. The second lieutenant Scheisskoph graduated from the reserve force. He was very happy for the war because that made him have the chance to wear the army uniform everyday and give the word of command with dignified and clear voice to those soldiers who are going to die. For himself, because of the poor sight and fistula, he was not required to
risk his life to participate in the war. In this fiction, Scheisskoph was obsessed with reviewing troops. He was committed to training the soldiers with their own personalities into monotonous robot. It was his addiction that made him have the chance to be promoted and praised by his senior officers. He even won the title of ―military genius‖ and became a general. It is obvious that the top level rulers aimed to destroy human’s personality and will. Only in this way, can they be in the ruling class forever without any resistance.
The ―soldier in white‖ was the most miserable character in this novel. He was encased from head to toe in plaster and gauze. He had two useless legs and arms. His legs were hoisted from thee hips and the two strange arms anchored up perpendicularly, all four limbs pinioned strangely in air. Sewn into the bandages over the insides of both elbows was zippered lip through which he was fed clear fluid from a jar. A silent zinc pipe rose from the cement on his groin and was coupled to a slim rubber hose that carried waste from his kidneys and dripped efficiently into a clear, stopped jar on the floor. When the jar on the floor was full, the jar feeding his elbow was empty and the two switched so that the staff could drip back to him. All others ever really saw of ―the soldier in white‖ was a frayed black hole over his mouth. No one talked to him except the Texan. ―The soldier in white‖ represent those whose soul and spirit have been destroyed by the rulers. The other pitiable man was Doc.Daneeka. He was always afraid of being sent to pacific. Because in spite of telling others he was alive again and again, he was still regarded as dead in a plane accident. He became a dead -alive person. Even his families for the sake of money thought that he was killed in the accident without any evidence.
What is more, there were a lot of other unique characters, for example, the boring Texan who is the only one talking with the ―soldier in white‖. Dunbar, the ward mate of Yossarian, always told Yossarian some strange dreams and liked to shoot skeet to kill his time. Clevinger, who was lost in the clouds, was full of theories but was lack of experience. The wounded gunner Snowden, though never appeared was known by the readers through Yossarian’s memory. Every time when Yossarian recalled his death, the readers are deeply affected. He lay dying in the tail of Yossarian’s plane and
at last revealed his terrifying secret. Major Major major, whose tragedy in life is that he resembles Henry Fonda and Major_de Coverley, whose face was so forbidding and no one has ever dared to ask his first name.
4.2The Arrangement of the Structure
The development of the novel can be divided into multiple segments. The first (chapters 1–11) broadly follows the story fragmented between characters, but in a single chronological time in 1943. The second (chapters 12–20) flashes back to focus primarily on the "Great Big Siege of Bologna" before once again jumping to the chronological "present" of 1943 in the third part (chapter 21–25). The fourth (chapters 26–28) flashes back to the origins and growth of Milo’s syndicate, with the fifth part (chapter 28–32) returning again to the narrative "present" but keeping to the same tone of the previous four. In the sixth and final part (chapter 32 on) while remaining in the "present" time the novel takes a much darker turn and spends the remaining chapters focusing on the serious and brutal nature of war and life in general. While the previous five parts develop the novel in the present and by use of flash-backs, it is in chapters 32–41 of the sixth and final part where the novel significantly darkens. Previously the reader had been cushioned from experiencing the full horror of events, but now the events are laid bare, allowing the full effect to take place. The horror begins with the attack on the undefended Italian mountain village, with the following chapters involving despair (Doc Daneeka and the Chaplain), disappearance in combat (Orr and Clevinger), disappearance caused by the army (Dunbar) or death (Nately, McWatt, Mudd, Kid Sampson, Dobbs, Chief White Halfoat and Hungry Joe) of most of Yossarian’s friends, culminating in the unspeakable horrors of Chapter 39, in particular the rape and murder of Michaela, who represents pure innocence. Many events in the book are repeatedly described from differing points of view, so the reader learns more about each event from each iteration, with the new information often completing a joke, the punch line of which was told several chapters previously. The narrative often describes events out of sequence, but events are referred to as if the reader is already familiar with them, so that the reader must ultimately piece
together a timeline of events. Specific words, phrases, and questions are also repeated frequently, generally to comic effect. Much of Heller's prose in Catch-22 is circular and repetitive, exemplifying in its form the structure of a Catch-22.
The seemingly random non-chronological structure to the novel is misleading Catch-22 is actually highly structured, but it is a structure of free association where ideas run into one another through seemingly random connections. For example, Chapter 1 entitled "The Texan" ends with "everybody but the CID man, who had caught cold from the fighter captain and come down with pneumonia." Chapter 2, entitled "Clevinger", begins with "In a way the CID man was pretty lucky, because outside t he hospital the war was still going on.‖ The CID man connects the two chapters like a free association bridge and eventually Chapter 2 flows from the CID man to Clevinger through more free association links.
4.3 The Themes of the Novel
The main theme of Catch-22 is the absolute power of bureaucracy, which is one of the most terrifying aspects of Catch-22. The most frightening and miserable thing in Catch-22is that Yossarian and his colleagues’ lives were not decided by themselves in danger but by those savage and terrifying bureaucrats. Catch-22is the typical symbol of bureaucratism. No novel before or since has matched Catch-22’s intensity and brilliance in depicting the brutal insanity of war. Heller satirizes military bureaucracy with bitter, sting humor, all the while telling the darkly comic story of Yossarian, a bombardier who refused to die. According to the Catch-22, the soldiers must risk their lives to obey the orders in spite of knowing the goal was meaningless or dangerous. At the end of this novel, the soldiers were still ordered to keep finishing their missions although they had known their allies have won the war. The soldiers did try their efforts to express their anger, but the bureaucrats just neglect their voices.
Affected by bureaucratism, individualism can not exist. Just as other novels set in war period, Catch-22 shows that the soldiers lost their self-esteem. But the loss is not only owing to the war but also caused by the bureaucratism. The typical example is that lieutenant Scheisskoph was so immersed in parade that the soldiers were
puppets rather than human. He even thought about bonding the soldiers together so that they can march in step with each other. In addition, the colonel Cathcart was also the same. He kept raising the number of missions not out of the needs of war but because he wanted to improve his military prestige among the soldiers. The ―soldier in white‖ is a different example for the extinguishing of individualism. The soldier appeared twice in the novel. Every time Yossarian and his friends saw him was about plaster and gauze. No one knew who was inside. Every time he was injected the same kind of clear fluid. It is absurd and obviously shows that he is not a real person.
Bureaucratism also leads to the disintegration of moral values. Milo made deals with the enemy bombing his own airfield and convince the higher authorities that it is beneficial for everyone. In the modern military bureaucratism, value did not exist. People found that they were involved in a crazy society. Everyone was trying to find solutions. Yossarian can not fight with those bureaucrats face to face. If he did that, he would only be a victim. As a result, the best way for him is to escape.
One of the other themes developed in the novel is the question of what is right to do in a basic moral dilemma, social dilemma, prisoner’s dilemma where a person can cooperate with others to their collective greater payoff or can sell them out by not cooperating, and reap even greater benefits as an individual. Another theme is the turning on their heads of notions of what people generally think of as morally right or wrong, particularly patriotism and honor, which lead most of the airmen to accept abusive lies and petty rules of bureaucrats, though Yossarian whole-heartedly disregards all such notions. When Major Major asked why he wouldn't fly more missions, Yossarian answered that he was just afraid.
4.4The Features of Language
Heller abandons traditional writing method. He adopts a new way to write Catch-22. He makes the words, phrases, and even the whole sentence in disorder resulting in people’s realizing the crazy and morbidity of the whole society. This is the feature of black humor.
There are plenty of repeating, dubious and paradoxical words, phrases, and
dialogues, and so on. Doe Daneeka was Yossarian’s friend and would do just about nothing in his power to help him. ―My only fault‖, he observed with practiced good humor watching for the effect of his words, ―is that I have no faults?‖ (Chapter 29) The paradoxical and confusing sentences are going counter to common sense aiming to hint the world’s ridiculous. Heller deliberately creates some confusing sentences. He plans to express clearly but he doesn’t do that. Actually, they are playing contrary roles. E.g. the more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. (Chapter9)
Generally speaking, the traditional novelists try to make their novels clear. Dubious is not allowed; while Heller just uses such sentences to let the people know the absurdity and irrationality of the world. We feel difficult to understand the logic order of this sentence, let alone the meaning. These sentences are to explain but make us more and more confused. E.g. McWatt wore fleecy bedroom slippers with his red pajamas and slept between freshly pressed colored bed sheets like the one Milo had retrieved half of for him from the grinning thief with the sweet tooth in exchange for none of the pitted dates Milo had borrowed from Yossarian. (Chapter7)
5. Conclusion
Catch-22, as Joseph Heller’s masterpiece, is one of typical representatives of black humor. This paper mainly has a general introduction of the novel and the author, Joseph Heller, and also explains the black humor briefly. Besides, the paper proceeds to discuss the black humor reflected in Catch-22 through four aspects: the portrayal of main characters, the arrangement of the structure, the themes of the novel and the features of language. In a word, catch -22 is one of the most important works of black humor and this paper is just a brief analysis on Catch-22and black humor, which would help us understand the novel better, but more and deeper researches are also necessary to be done. All in all, both Catch-22 and black humor are valuable research topics, more studies on them are necessary.
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