| As one of the most distinctive American novelists of the 20 th century,Joseph Heller wrote many works in his lifetime.Joseph Heller’s first novel Catch-22,with his unique writing style led to a new literary genre-black humor.The novel was published at a time when American society was in turmoil during the war.The novel indirectly shows a crazy world through war.Heller makes fun of the whole war,which shows the endless suffering that war brings to ordinary people.Catch-22 reflects the history of World War II,with Heller’s war experience as the historical background of the novel.Yossarian is the bomber of the flying aquadron,but he goes from loving war to hating it.He is unwilling to sacrifice without merit,so he pretends to be ill,but fails.According to catch-22,madman can avoid flying,but must submit an application by oneself.At the same time,those who are aware of the dangers of flying and apply for exemption belong to the clear-hearted,so he must continue to fly.In addition to this,pilots are allowed to return home after completing the required number of flights,otherwise they are not allowed to return.Finally,Yossarian realizes catch-22 is a fraud,is an insurmountable obstacle.At the end of the novel,he flees to Sweden.This paper tries to apply spacial criticism theory to analyze physical,social and mental space in the work and discusses the corrupt nature of the collusion between the American social bureaucracy and capital and the people’s resistance and self-redemption.Spatial criticism is a method of literary criticism developed gradually in the1980 s on the basis of postmodern theories such as cultural geography and cultural studies.Space criticism breaks the traditional research method of landscape in text,paying attention to the study of space and space metaphor in the text behind the culture,history,consciousness,identity,power,and other multilevel logical relationship.Space has been widely used metaphorically in non-geographical fields,which has become a broad spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences.Using spatial criticism theory to analyze spatial factors in Catch-22,the readers can clearly see that people’s aversion to war and resistance and redemption expressed in the work.All these can reflect the corrupt nature of the collusion between the American social bureaucracy and capital,and the people’s resistance and self-redemption,and also reflect the corrupt nature of the collusion between bureaucrat and capital in American society and the endless suffering of the ordinary people. |
