The Absurdity Art In Catch-22

Heller's best-known novel, Catch-22(1961) is considered a major work of the post-World War II era. Heller uses black humor to satirize the absurdity of war and modern society, and by taking an existential view, he supports the value of human existence and the individual human life. The term Catch-22 has also become a highly existential construct, suggesting that the human predicament is somehow ambiguous, circuitous and unfathomable. By employing some experimental techniques, Heller "dramatizes" his view of the human condition and the nature of the world, namely, absurdity, successfully. The novel has generated an outpouring of scholarly exegesis, but almost all Heller's critics have caught much of the novel's special "flavor", its unique mixture of laughter and horror and its thematic intensity. However, few scholars have properly explained these experimental techniques which are employed to suggest the irrational nature of war, society and the world. This thesis has focused on these writing techniques for the purpose of elaborating how they serve to show the absurdity of the world.In the island of Pianosa, almost everyone involved in the war is lunatic and everything that happens in the war is preposterous. The provisions of Catch-22 are no less absurd, contradictory, and mechanical. There are all kinds of characters but most of them, except the anti-hero Yossarian, are caricatures and gradually, they become increasingly absurd. In a meaningless and absurd universe, language does not describe people's actions, but prescribes them and words are used not tocommunicate but to obscure meaning.Moreover, the structure of Catch-22 appears to be a chronological jumble, in which plots are fragmented, contents are discontinuous and events in the present intermingle with cumulative repetitions and gradual clarification of past actions. But it surely has its own special integrity and coherence, which is interior and psychological rather than actual. The central character Yossarian's actions and Catch-22 itself, for instance, are two interior clues. This unusual handling of time sequence not only brings readers a sense of absurdity, but also qualifies Catch-22 as an example of experimental fiction.